


Equilibrium of Two Moons

by DemureDesire



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
Genre: Angst, Eventual Smut, F/M, Femdom, Loneliness, Possessive Behavior, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Reylo - Freeform, Slow Burn, The Force Ships It, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Virgin Kylo Ren
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-03-27 15:34:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 27,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13883832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemureDesire/pseuds/DemureDesire
Summary: “You saw him?” Leia finally said. Rey nodded in silence.“I tried to bring him back,” she choked out. “When I was aboard the Supremacy on the lift — I felt it... The conflict, the light. Ben Solo is there. I — I just couldn’t reach him.” She cupped her face in her palms in defeat. Leia touched Rey’s shoulder to comfort her.





	1. Chapter 1

Rey held the two pieces of the broken lightsaber as she looked around at the remaining Resistance fighters aboard the Millennium Falcon. This is all we have left, she thought to herself. Less than fifty Resistance fighters had boarded the ship. She stared absently into space as everyone around her moved about the ship, tending to the wounded and mourning those lost in the battle on Crait.

Her eyes eventually drifted toward Finn and Rose. Rose still lay unconscious, and even though responsibility tried to remove Finn from her side, he would not go. He sat on the bed next to her, his fingers intertwined with hers waiting patiently for her to awaken. A healer stopped by to check her vitals and politely asked him to move aside so she could work. When Finn didn’t hear her, she asked again. After realizing that she had said something to him, he shifted aside to let her work, but his eyes remained fixated on Rose’s face until the healer left. He sat back down beside her.

A pang of emptiness surged through Rey as she watched the couple from across the room. She shuddered. She averted her eyes from the couple and glanced over at Poe and Leia. They were sprawled over a tattered map deep in conversation, intensely discussing where to take the remaining Resistance fighters to regroup and contact whatever Republic still remained for assistance. They had spent over an hour in hyperspace, hoping to evade the First Order’s tracking system but at the cost of wasting precious fuel.

Everyone around her seemed to fit perfectly together; their jobs and personalities coalescing into the heart of the Resistance. Though there was sadness at the losses they had suffered from the First Order, everyone seemed to be in higher spirits. ‘You were great out there;’ ‘Great job;’and other words of encouragement filled the room. The Resistance overcame the biggest battle it had ever faced, so why did she still feel so alone? Even in a room full of people she would call comrades, she felt as lonely as she did as a scavenger on Jakku. Rey’s eyes welled with tears as she fought them away.

Leia looked up from the map and met Rey’s gaze. She quickly turned back to Poe, gave him orders to their next location, and he ran off to the cockpit. She rose from her seat and quietly took a place next to a disheartened Rey. She sat next to Rey for a long while before she spoke, shooing away anyone who came up to her.

“You saw him?” Leia finally said. Rey nodded in silence. 

“I tried to bring him back,” she choked out. “When I was aboard the Supremacy on the lift — I felt it... The conflict, the light. Ben Solo is there. I — I just couldn’t reach him.” She cupped her face in her palms in defeat. Leia touched Rey’s shoulder to comfort her.

“I though Han would be able to bring him back to us,” she paused. “Han didn’t always believe in the Force, not for what it truly is. He once believed that it was a power that some had to manipulate the environment around them. Even though he could saw the raw power of the Force in his friends and in his enemies, he didn’t want our son to be a part of that life. He thought that he could shield Ben away from the Force so he would not have to endure the war his parents’ fought.

“Han and I fought for years about his training. I could feel the Force manifesting in Ben while he was still in the womb...” Leia trailed off. She took a moment to collect her thoughts before starting again. “Ben knew he was special, and when his friends went away he begged to go. Han was stubborn in trying to give his son a normal life. Every year when a new class of Jedi would leave, Ben would plead with Han to let him go, and every year he said no.”

Leia sat up straight. She was no longer looking at Rey; she was staring down at her hands clasped in her lap. “It wasn’t until he was thirteen when he began acting out. At the time, Snoke had raised the First Order from the ashes of the Empire. We saw Darkness rising in our son, and we were afraid that, given his bloodline, Snoke was reaching out to him. Han finally agreed to send Ben away to train with Luke, but I think we were already too late.

“I thought that Han would be able to bring him back from the Darkness the day I met you, but the paternal connection was not enough to bring him into the Light. Ben was still angry at his father for not allowing him to train, and then sending him to Luke who had seen the Darkness brewing inside him. But it wasn’t Luke’s fault. He just —”

“I know,” Rey said quietly. “Luke and Ben both told me what happened that night.” Leia looked back up at her. Her deep brown eyes began searching for answers in the young girl’s expression and saw disappointment and defeat. Leia seemed to beyond her eyes and into her very soul, and somehow she understood everything Rey was feeling in that moment. 

The Millennium Falcon made a sudden jerk. They had arrived at their destination, breaching the atmosphere of the planet. Leia glanced at the opening door and stood up. Rey wasn’t quite ready to leave, not ready to move onto the next part of their journey. Leia took Rey’s hand. 

“There has always been a balance between the Light and the Dark Side, but hardly anyone remembers what is in between,” Leia smiled weakly, dropped Rey’s hand, and walked off the ship.


	2. Chapter 2

Kylo Ren walked through a dark corridor of the Supremacy as two Stormtroopers clambered to keep up with him. 

“Supreme Leader, General Hux is requesting your presence on the bridge,” one stammered. Kylo stopped in his tracks and turned around irritably. 

“What could be possibly want?” The cloaked man barked. The second Stormtrooper lowered his head, trembling at Kylo Ren’s response.

“We are unsure, Supreme Leader. He just said it was urgent.” 

He glowered at the two Stormtroopers. Armitage Hux was becoming a giant although necessary nuisance. The First Order had suffered the worst defeat it had ever known; losing track of the Resistance ship; being defeated and distracted by Luke Skywalker; and allowing the Jedi girl to escape his grasp. He violently pushed through them in the direction of the bridge, and they scampered away.

As Kylo Ren walked onto the bridge, the room went silent. The Stormtroopers sitting at their consoles bowed their heads, and those standing knelt as their leader skulked through the room.

A man with bright, red hair didn’t acknowledge his entrance like everyone else in the room had, and Kylo could see a long set of stitches on the back of the his head from when he slammed him into the wall of the ship on Crait.

“Supreme Leader,” Hux muttered, clearly dissatisfied of the former Commander’s new title. “We have picked up a trace of the Millennium Falcon heading towards the Mid Rim,” He turned towards Kylo Ren expecting a response, a word of praise for tracking down the Resistance ship that so narrowly escaped them. 

“And?” Kylo Ren breathed irritably.

“Well I — I wasn’t sure if you wanted to follow them. There has to be less than fifty Resistance fighters left and —” the red-haired man stammered out.

“No!” The Supreme Leader bellowed. “As long as the girl lives, so do the Jedi and the Resistance. They must all be destroyed.” He clenched his fist and Hux began clutching his throat and gasping for air. He continued, “we will follow them to the ends of the galaxy until all the Resistance, all the Jedi are dead.” Kylo Ren opened his fists, and Hux fell to the ground.

“Very well —” General Hux whispered as he collected himself from the floor. “Supreme Leader.” 

Kylo Ren stormed off the bridge and down the corridor towards his small, but familiar room. Stormtroopers patrolling the halls leapt out of his way, not in deference but rather to avoid his warpath. He stopped abruptly, realizing that he was heading to the room he kept as Commander. He was now Supreme Leader, and Snoke’s quarters were now his. He turned right down the next corridor and began making his way towards his new room. 

He opened the double doors leading to the Supreme Leader’s apartment. He was surprised at the mere size of it, remembering his bed tucked into a dark room that felt no larger than a closet. The apartment was dark and rather plain. Cool, black floors matched the rest of the ship’s aesthetic, and two walls on either side were lined with the same ruby red curtains that adorned Snoke’s throne room. Where he would have normally expected a wall, there was glass from floor to ceiling, giving its onlooker a complete view of the stars and space before him, and the Supremacy below. 

If there was any proof of his Master’s existence to be found within, he left no evidence of it. Not that his protege imagined that Snoke ever owned anything of sentiment. If Kylo hadn’t known it to be Snoke’s residence, he would say that no one had ever lived there. Everything felt unused, sterile. 

Despite the apartment’s decadent size, it boasted a single item: the largest bed Kylo had ever seen.

There was a knock on the door. Kylo Ren begrudgingly answered it.

“Supreme Leader,” said a nameless Stormtrooper. In his outstretched hands was the mask of Darth Vader. “From your former quarters.” Ren took it in his hands, and the soldier marched away. He closed the door behind him and inspected his grandfather’s mask. Other than his robes, he had no other possessions that would need to be brought to his new quarters.

‘I suppose I am more like you than I thought, grandfather. Even you were weakened by the Light in the end.’ He discarded the mask carelessly over his shoulder. The impact of the mask against the ground shattered it into several pieces, rendering it unrecognizable.

He dropped his lightsaber and threw his cloak into a heap onto the floor and sunk onto the bed. Movement out of the corner of his eye startled him, and he looked up at the mirror and saw a scarred, black-haired man staring back at him. He hadn’t noticed the mirror next to the bed before. His eyes were sunken and dark. He looked as he felt: utterly defeated. Though he had risen as the most powerful ruler in the galaxy, he felt as empty as his apartment. His fingers traced the scar across his face, down his neck, down to his chest, fingers tingling as he remembering who inflicted it.

The girl.

His memory swept him into the past, to how they first met. Back on Takodana, he couldn’t quite place what about her piqued his interest, drew him to her like gravity. It was the first time they met, but she was irrevocably familiar. His curiosity desperately demanded to know why, so he took her to Starkiller Base and invaded her mind, not only to uncover the map to Luke Skywalker, but to ascertain why she intrigued him.

There is a certain intimacy in exploring another’s mind. Picking through and watching memories and dreams, feeling their emotions, knowing their fears. Her mind had felt different, was different, so he searched for answers. He felt her penetrating loneliness; it felt exactly like his. 

He was surprised when he discovered she truly was just a scavenger. A nobody borne to nameless relatives who found herself looking for her parents in everyone, and to his dismay, even in his own. 

He felt he was coming close to his answer when he hit a barrier. He had tried to push through it, but the barrier forced him back, back into the respite of his own mind. But he wasn’t alone in his thoughts. Despite being tied down, she unknowingly slipped into his mind and picked out his fears. 

It scared him to the bone. No one had ever resisted him, but when she used the Force against him, he could feel the raw, untamed Force lurking within her. It was the same power Luke Skywalker tried to control when he was a Padawan. The awakening he had felt was hers.

Snoke had constantly reminded him that as he grew more powerful in the Darkness, his equal would rise in the Light. Equal didn’t exactly cover what he saw in her. His glimpse into her mind felt almost like a reflection of himself. He was determined to understand more about her, to teach her. 

But she escaped. 

Kylo Ren forced himself out of his own head, his memories starting to weigh heavy on him. It wouldn’t do him well to dwell on the past, no matter how inexplicably drawn to it he was. There was nothing he could do to change it, he knew that. 

He couldn’t make her understand how to let the past die. She clung with every fiber of her being to the past, to the parents who abandoned her, to the nearly demolished Resistance, to the dead Jedi. If she wouldn’t join him, he had to move forward alone.

Even if he didn’t want to.

Even if it was empty.


	3. Chapter 3

Rey sat alone in the Falcon. Everyone else had left, but she wasn’t quite ready to rejoin the group. She climbed into a bunk and brought her legs to her chest and wrapped her arms around her shins. She needed time to absorb what transpired over the past few weeks, and she welcomed a moment of respite while the Resistance didn’t immediately need her help. Her life as a scavenger back on Jakku was mere months ago, but it felt like an eternity. She closed her eyes and sighed, and quickly realized she was no longer alone. Rey didn’t have to look up to see who was there. She remained quiet, trying to ignore his presence even though she could feel his eyes on her, begging for her attention. 

Kylo Ren was still sitting on his bed on the Supremacy. He was silent, trying to find the right words to say to her. He fought the urge to berate her for following the ways of the past, doing exactly the opposite of what he begged her not to do, but he couldn’t find it in himself to yell at her afraid she would force their bond closed. 

_This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. We were meant to rule the galaxy. I killed Snoke so we —_

“Liar!” Rey snarled. “You killed Snoke so you would become leader of the First Order!” She clenched her teeth and fists and turned away from him.

_I wouldn’t lie —_

“Go away!” She sobbed, and she was alone once again. 

...

Over the next few weeks, the Resistance had recruited more than twenty fighters from various systems still sympathetic to the Republic. In his search, he discovered a small group of six people who were Force-sensitive. Rey spent every moment of every day training with them, preparing them for their mission against the First Order to bring peace to the galaxy. Her experience with the Force was not extensive enough to warrant her teaching herself, let alone anyone else. But she was the last Jedi, so the burden fell to her.

“No, no, no!” She shouted at one of the Padawans. “If that’s how you think you’re going to fight the First Order, you might as well end your life now.” The boy, no older than fifteen, cowered before her. The entire group went silent as Rey berated the him for not following her instructions to the letter. 

Finn was across the field from Rey with a recently awakened Rose. He was holding her hand and gazing deeply into her eyes, hanging on her every word. If it wasn’t for all the commotion coming from Rey’s shouting, he probably wouldn’t have even noticed anything else. Rose nudged Finn to go find out what was going on with his friend.

“Rey?” Finn walked up beside Rey and touched her shoulder. “Maybe you should give your Padawans a break; you’ve been working them so —”

“They’re not ready to fight for the Resistance,” she snapped. “They need more training, not a break.” Finn looked at Rey. Her eyes were dark and sunken as though she hadn’t slept in weeks. She swallowed her anger realizing that she allowed her rage to control her. Her expression softened. 

“Perhaps they don’t need a break, but you do,” Finn said sternly. “Go and get some rest.” He looked to the six Padawans, still quiet. “Your lessons will resume tomorrow morning.” 

“But I —” 

“Rey, go.” 

She huffed and stormed away and onto the Falcon. She usually spent her time alone in the Falcon while the others slept. She was desperate for the sweet abyss of sleep but her dreams continued to haunt her. Her entire life’s mistakes played in her mind each time she closed her eyes at night. So instead she mulled over what she could have done differently into the early hours of the night until she would eventually collapse into dreamless sleep if only for a few hours.

She crawled into her bed; she was still angry that at Finn for making her leave the recruits. She picked up the broken pieces of Luke’s lightsaber. Leia said there was no possible way her weapon could be repaired, not that she knew anything about constructing or repairing lightsabers. She could probably reconstruct a Star Destroyer with more ease. She stared at them hard for a moment and then threw them across the room. She felt lost. She had lost her only mentor, and she had no one to guide her in teachings of the Force. 

The three lessons she had with Luke barely scratched the surface of the Force. There was still so much she didn’t understand. She barely considered herself a Padawan, but she was the last Jedi. 

She felt the weight of the world upon her and understood how Luke felt when she approached him about returning to the Resistance. Facing them alone was laughable, even for a Jedi Master, let alone his protégée he mentored for a week. 

Tears streamed from her eyes in anguish, and she closed clenched her eyes to hold them back. She could the heaviness of her eyelids and didn’t try to open them again. 

...

It was the same dream that haunted her almost every night. Rey stood alone in the snowy forest, shivering at the cold wind. Two moons gave way to some light around her, but there was nothing to see except snow and trees. The cold wetness of the snow seeped into her boots through her thin robes and to her very core. She shivered, teeth chattering, searching around for something, anything that would offer shelter. The snow was indescribably beautiful, but the world around her was deafeningly silent. The only sound she could hear was the crunch of snow under her feet as she walked. 

_I’ll come back for you, sweetheart. I promise._ Rey heard a deep, familiar voice behind her. She had heard it in her dreams before but never this clearly. She always thought it was her father calling out to her, but she had no memory of her father or her mother. She desperately looked around trying to find the owner of the voice. 

“Where are you?” She called out. She peaked through the trees hoping for any sign of life, any tracks that someone else had been there, but Rey could only see her own. The ping of blasters sounded close by, but she couldn’t see from where or who was firing. That much didn’t concern her anyway. But the noise did preclude any chance of her hearing who spoke to her.

Every time she had this dream before, she could never find who had spoken those words. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a cloaked figure standing between two trees off in the distance. She ran desperately towards the man, but before she reached him, he vanished.

_You’re not alone._

Rey gasped as she woke up from her dream. She was sweating profusely. She hadn’t the slightest idea how long she had been asleep, and the ship was dark. She sat up from the bed and realized something was touching her hand. She blinked and her eyes adjusted to the darkness.

 _You’re not alone,_ the deep voice called out again. It was the same voice from her dreams. She could make out a figure sitting along her bed. She fought the urge to pull back her hand and attack the figure that snuck up on her. She and the figure sat in silence for a long while. The voice seemed to be embedded in all her nightmares for as long as she could recall; it was the only part of her dreams that offered comfort while she slept. Rey breathed quietly as tried to make out the features of the figure. 

“Why is your voice always in my dreams? Who are you?” Rey whispered, not entirely sure that she wasn’t imagining the dark shadow before her. It gently squeezed her hand.

 _I think you’ve always known._ The dark figure let go of her hand and stood to leave.

“Please don’t go,” begged Rey. Tears streamed down her face. The figure stopped and reached out a hand and cupped her face, gently wiping her tears from her cheek with a thumb. The hand was warm and comforting, and she touched it with her own.

_I am always with you._

Rey fought with every atom of her being to stay awake even though her mind was racing. She opened her mouth to stammer out a question and the figure held a finger to her lips. 

_Not now, but I promise you will know everything soon enough._ She wasn’t satisfied with that answer, but her eyelids were heavy with exhaustion. Within moments dreamless sleep whisked her away.


	4. Chapter 4

There was an abrupt knock at the door. Kylo Ren sat up in his bed in the Supreme Leader’s quarters. His long, black hair was a tangled mess, and sweat pasted it against his forehead. He breathed heavily trying to catch his breath as he climbed out of bed. There was another knock.

“I’m coming,” Kylo hissed as he clumsily slipped into yesterday’s clothes. He walked across the room, then opened one of the large double doors. “What do you want?” Hux was standing before him.

“I wanted to speak to you about—” the General trailed off, crinkling his nose in disgust as a small draft blew from the Supreme Leader’s quarters. “Busy night I see,” he smirked and wafted his hand in front of his nose. Kylo glared at him. “Well, we have important business to discuss after you’ve—” the door slammed in his face before he could finish.

Kylo Ren peeled off his clothes and walked towards a wall panel. Before he reached it, the panel creaked open revealing a refresher. He opened the door to the stall to turn on the water, but it had already turned on automatically, steam starting to rise. He reached a hand out into the water, but it wasn’t quite warm yet. He shut the door, and looked into the mirror that was in the room.

It had been some time since he had a good look at himself in a mirror. He hardly recognized the man that stood before him. His eyes were dark and sullen from exhaustion. He twisted himself in the mirror to see all his scars that his long, black robes concealed. Most of them were earned during his time with the Knights of Ren, and he took them as a badge of honor. But there was the one scar he couldn’t hide behind since he smashed his mask in the lift, the scar Rey gave him that night in the forest. He smashed the mirror at the thought of her, and broken shards of glass sliced open his knuckles. 

Steam poured out of the stall as Kylo Ren opened the door and climb in. Blood dripped from his hands and swirled down the drain. He held both his hands against the wall, propping himself up as he let the hot water pour over his body. He closed his eyes and allowed his thoughts to wander. The pulsing pain in his knuckles nudged his thoughts to Rey again. He still couldn’t fathom why she rejected him. He knew she wanted the same thing as him; he saw it when their fingertips touched. His mind replayed that moment, remembering the brown-haired, freckled girl who would stand with him when the time came.

There was an uncomfortable ache growing between his thighs. He could take care of it quickly considering it had been quite some time since his last release. The girl was fresh in his mind to offer some inspiration. But there just wasn’t the same urge as when he was younger, not since... He sighed deeply as he slapped the water dial to cold. The hot water shifted to ice against his skin, and the ache dissipated.

...

His cloak flowed behind him as he walked onto the bridge. Everyone in the room went quiet and bowed lazily murmuring “Supreme Leader” as Kylo Ren passed. The red-haired general was speaking quietly speaking to three of his cadets. When he determined the sound of Kylo’s boots marching across the floor that he was in listening distance, he quickly shooed the generals away, and they scampered back to their stations. 

“Ah, Supreme Leader,” Hux grimaced. “It’s a pleasure for you to actually join us. I have some news.” He cupped his hands behind his back. “While we have toppled most of the Republic’s government, there are a few systems that need a reminder of what the First Order has accomplished. I’m taking part of the fleet on a mission to... well let’s say, remind them who is in control of the galaxy,” Hux said with a crooked smile.

“Very well,” the Supreme Leader responded, ultimately uninterested in Hux’s plans. The Republic was already in disrepair. It would be centuries before they would even have a semblance of what was. 

“Well,” the General started again, clearing his throat. “While I’m off crushing the last hopes of the Republic with my fleet, I certainly expect that you are going to be hunting down and destroying the rest of the Resistance.” His emphasis on the words ‘my’ and ‘expect’ created an especially condescending tone. 

“Of course!” Kylo Ren snapped. “What else would I possibly be doing?” He could sense uneasiness in the room. He inconspicuously reached out with the Force listening in on the minds around him. 

_...Sulking in your room having dreams about the Jedi girl._ The thought came from one of Hux’s cadets. Kylo Ren’s dark eyes locked eyes with him, and he immediately realized he was not alone in his thoughts. 

“No, Supreme Leader, I didn’t—” With a flick of two fingers, Ren snapped the neck of the general. His face was stoic as he watched the man slump lifelessly to the ground. Kylo felt fear exuding from everyone in the room as he turned and marched off the bridge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little bit shorter than normal, but I’ve got more on the way. ;)


	5. Chapter 5

Rey peacefully opened her eyes.

She was still on the Falcon. Sitting up in her cot, she tried to recollect the night before. Having the best night of sleep she had in ages, the girl couldn’t quite place if what she remembered had actually happened or if it was merely a concoction of her exhausted mind’s imagination. 

Looking around the craft, she realized that she was still alone. Sighing heavily, she glided towards the empty cockpit and sat down in the pilot’s seat, Han’s seat. From where she sat, she admired all the previous owner’s mostly illegal modifications. Thinking back to the moment when the smuggler and the hairy mountain found her and Finn under the floor of the ship, she smiled softly. 

The sun was shining brightly outside, and something glinted above her head. Rey glanced up to see a shiny set of gold dice gleaming. Reaching her hand up, she pulled down the dice. It was probably the only item of sentiment that was on the craft. Other than the modifications to the ship, there was no other evidence to suggest that the smuggler she knew as Han Solo was its owner.

She twirled the dice in her hands and then tucked it into her robes. It wasn’t much, but it was a reminder of what she lost, who she lost.

Sighing deeply, she stood up and took one last look at the cockpit before she disembarked the Millennium Falcon. 

...

Leia was staring through on the old Rebel base that overlooked a giant, lusciously green canyon. She paid no attention to the movement of the Resistance fighters, who behind her were repairing and modifying some tech that the Rebels left behind after the fall of the Empire.

C3PO’s metal footsteps clanked behind her, and she turned around and smiled weakly at him. “General Organa, we have been attempting to contact our remaining allies, but it seems that they are all under attack. To those whom we were able to make contact...” C3PO’s expression saddened. “Princess, everyone is gone. What are we supposed to do? Who are we supposed to—” 

Leia held up a hand to the panicking machine. It took a moment for him to realize that she had quit listening. Lost in her thoughts, the general looked around at her remaining Resistance. She couldn’t find it in herself to tell the fighters their present situation; hope was the only thing holding them together. Her eyes fixated on Rey as she entered the room. 

The general looked back to C3PO and smiled softly. “It appears she is our last hope.” Not entirely understanding what she meant, the machine cocked his metal head and tried to stammer out a question, but Leia was already walking towards the girl.

“General, I’m not entirely sure what I am supposed to do,” Rey began. “I am no match for the darkness in Kylo Ren thus useless to the Resistance.” Her eyes drifted to the floor in defeat. She felt so out of place among the Resistance fighters who scurried around them with purpose whether it repairing a ship or gathering supplies. “I can’t even fight anymore since,” the girl held out the two broken pieces of the lightsaber. 

Leia’s hands reached out and met Rey’s. The scavenger looked up into the gleaning eyes of the general. “Instead of trying to fix a broken past, it is time that you move toward your own future.” The princess walked a confused Rey over to a bench set aside in the corner of the room. She began again, “there is a system, a planet not entirely destroyed by the Empire, where they may yet remain.” She gestured to the blue kyber crystal hidden within one of the pieces of the lightsaber. 

“Hundreds of generations of Padawans before you traveled to the Ilum system with their Masters to find a kyber crystal that called to them, and together they forged a lightsaber. There were more planets before that boasted them, but the Empire plundered most of them as energy sources and to create massively destructive weaponry. I know the Empire once occupied a presence there but had only briefly before their government fell.”

The General’s eyes looked at Rey, and she felt everything she needed to know. “The loneliness you feel when you’re with the Resistance is not because of your compassion and belief in the cause; it is because your place is not with the Resistance.” She paused a moment. Feeling the gut-wrenching pain of Leia’s words, Rey’s eyes swelled with tears and broke eye contact. After a long silence, Leia stood up. Rey shut her eyes, and the tears she was trying so hard to hold back escaped as she let out a quiet sob.

The loneliness she felt wasn’t new. The pang of emptiness followed her throughout her life. She thought she made a home, a family within the Resistance, but she was wrong. Rey was alone, like she always had been... like she always will be. 

General Organa reached a hand out to Rey’s chin and gently turned it up to look at her. “I have seen in you something that I haven’t seen in all my years. You will not follow the same path of those who walked in the Light before you.” She thumbed away Rey’s tears and smiled. “You have your own path to forge.” Leia’s hand fell away from the scavenger’s face as she watched for her understanding saw it dawn on the young girl’s face. “Now, go,” the General said gleamingly, as she walked back to her post by the window and out it and into the sky.


	6. Chapter 6

There was a disturbance in the Force. He felt it in his skin, in his bones. This time was different, completely unlike what he felt when the Force awakened in his counterpart. It wasn’t an unbalance; there had not been another awakening, no one new who took hold of the Force. The change in the Force felt like a gentle ripple across the galaxy.

Trying to place what originated the disturbance, Kylo Ren paced back and forth in his apartment. After some moments, the tall man walked towards the large window and stared out into the abyss. As he closed his eyes, he reached an ungloved palm to the window and reached out with his mind.

No, it certainly wasn’t another awakening, of that he was sure. So what could it possibly be? 

Rey.

She was the only possible explanation, but he couldn’t fathom why or how. Ren couldn’t see her. Since their last connection, she had effectively been able to block him from her thoughts completely, precluding the Supreme Leader’s attempts to speak to her, let alone find her.

A sense of uncertain pride welled inside him. His counterpart was getting stronger with the Force every day. Rey was no longer the feeble-minded scavenger he captured in Takodana. Regardless of Ren’s countless years studying and training in the Dark Side of the Force, the girl learned quickly and matched his Darkness with her Light. 

He wondered how long the girl would fight against him. Desperate to see the change in the Force, the change in her, Ren clenched his eyes and pushed out further with his mind.

Nothing.

Sweat poured from every pore in his body. No matter how hard he tried, she had successfully cloaked herself from him. Defeated, he sat down and crossed his legs on the cold, black floor. He closed his eyes, no longer reaching out in the force but reaching out for solutions to his predicament. He might not be able to see her directly, but if he could find some trace of her presence, someone who knew where she was, he could track her down.

The Supremacy was orbiting over a lush, green planet. The First Order had tracked the last of the Resistance to their base, unaware that their enemy had followed them. The entire First Order was waiting on Kylo Ren’s command to strike them down. He told the colonels on the bridge that they were to wait to fire, to wait to see if they had any allies reaching out to them. Though most of the Republic was gone or currently being destroyed by Hux’s fleet, Kylo Ren wanted to be sure there were no more Resistance sympathizers providing aid.

Though he couldn’t feel Rey’s presence on the planet, he could feel his mother’s. Even through miles of space and atmosphere, Ren could feel the sad disappointment of his mother’s eyes on him as she stared out into the sky. He shrugged it off and glanced over to the mirror next to him.

As he stared back at himself, he realized how he was sitting: lotus-style. His mind flickered back to Crait, and he remembered how the man who helped the Resistance escape, and the idea sparked into his head. 

Having found his solution, he had to calm his excitement as he closed his eyes to meditate. He cleared his mind of all the Darkness within him and allowed the Light to flood his mind. The tall man levitated from the floor, shaking under the immense power he had to muster to project himself on the planet.

...

He looked around, and there was one lone building hidden between a canopy of trees. It was nighttime, and all was quiet except for the footsteps of a couple Resistance fighters patrolling the grounds. Searching for any oncoming danger, the Resistance guards were looking outwards away from their base. They didn’t have the slightest inclination that anything would already be inside the perimeter. Ren tried to remain as silent as possible anyway. The guards weren’t looking for him, but if even one person in the Resistance recognized him, he wouldn’t be able to track Rey. 

Every make-shift tent he passed was quiet save the soft snores of sleeping Resistance. He tip-toed to the entrance of the base and gingerly opened the door. He stepped in and closed the door behind him.

The large room was dark, and Ren stood silently as he waited for his eyes to adjust. The room was filled with half-repaired transports that obviously hadn’t been flown since the Rebels occupied the base thirty years ago. The consoles were dark, probably to conserve what little power the base could muster. He walked toward the center of the room, and he saw the shadow of a woman standing in front of the window. The figure did not turn to face him.

“She is not here,” a feminine voice whispered out. Ren recognized the voice, withered and tired compared to the last time he had heard it. He could not see her eyes, but he sensed the same sadness as he felt looking down on the planet from the Supremacy. 

“Tell me where she is,” Kylo Ren said sternly. He had no desire to speak to her, but she was probably the only person who had an idea of where Rey could be.

“She needs to be alone, Ben,” the woman said in a motherly tone. “She has to find her own path, free of any outside influence.”

The Supreme Leader fumed and reached out a hand to grasp at her mind. “You know I can make you tell me anything. You know I can kill you...” He trailed off before gaining enough composure to start again. “I can kill you just like I killed Han Solo. I will kill everyone in my way. I will tear apart the galaxy to reach her.”

She raised her hand to stop him and smiled, still staring out the window. “I know you will,” she said warmly. “In all my years if there’s anything I’ve learned it’s that Solo’s always do what they want.” The woman continued to stare out the window at the stars and the moon gleaning down on the planet.

Ren clenched his fists. His entire life he felt stuck in his father’s shadow. Even after destroying his uncle’s Jedi temple and declaring himself an ally and asset to the First Order, betraying his entire family, how dare anyone have the audacity to still compare him to Han Solo, a good-for-nothing father, a smuggler, and Rebel scum. He felt the anger boiling inside him, threatening to level the entire building.

“I do not know where she went,” Leia began again, smiling slightly at her son’s bubbling anger at her comment. “I told her of a place where she could find a new kyber crystal but whether or not she is traveling there or elsewhere I cannot know.”

”Which system?” The tall man said impatiently. He was growing tired of waiting for an answer. He already knew she wasn’t on the planet. Thoughts ran through his head on how to track Rey. She probably took his father’s piece of garbage of a ship which could easily be tracked...

”It was the first planet we tried to make a home. Back when you still called yourself Ben Solo.” Her voice was quiet, sad. She continued to stare out over the lush, moonlit canyon despite tears clouding her vision. She wanted to turn around, to look at her son truly for the first time since she sent him to train with Luke, but she sensed the Force shift behind her.

Leia didn’t have to turn around to know that her son was already gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first six chapters is what I had before I joined AO3, but I promise I’ll still be writing more!
> 
> Comments are always appreciated. :3


	7. Chapter 7

The Millennium Falcon lurched forward as it came out of hyperspace. Rey stared out the cockpit’s window to the deep blue planet before her. She adjusted herself in the pilot’s seat, preparing the ship to breach the planet’s atmosphere. 

It was easier the last time she visited this planet; she had a copilot, but now she was alone. Even though Chewie would have gladly gone with her if she had just asked, she couldn’t. Even in her short time being part of the Resistance, she had already seen too many people get hurt because of her. She couldn’t bear to deal with losing anyone else.

So instead of telling anyone, Finn, Poe, Chewie, that she was leaving, she snuck onto the ship in the cover of night and left without saying goodbye. She hoped they would understand, but even if they didn’t, she doubted she would ever see their reactions. As much as she wanted to help the Resistance, she didn’t belong there. She wasn’t a Jedi, and she was almost useless to them without her lightsaber anyway. She couldn’t match her Light to the Darkness in Kylo Ren.

Not that it mattered. She wasn’t going to look for a new kyber crystal regardless of Leia’s guidance. She ached to retreat into the familiarity of her old life. Even though Jakku was a miserable wasteland, at least it was consistent. The dangers of her old scavenger’s life were child’s play compared to what she faced in the past couple months. Life then, though mundane, was simpler. There was no impending doom, no worries of losing anyone close...

But Rey was never going back to Jakku if she could help it. There was nothing tying her to the planet where she grew up. Kylo Ren made sure she knew it before they were both knocked unconscious. Maz was right all along, who she was waiting for was never coming back. Her parents were dead and probably had been for years.

Sensors on the console of the cockpit started beeping rapidly, alerting Rey that she was entering the blue planet’s atmosphere. She countered them by tapping a code into the keypad and reaching over past the empty copilot’s chair to a lever and pushed it down. The beeping stopped as she guided the Falcon through thick, grey clouds. Violent raindrops pummeled the windshield, and Rey could see the ocean spanning in every direction as far as her eyes could see.

The Jedi put the craft into autopilot and slumped back into her seat. Her hands fumbled for the gold dice she kept in her pocket. She twirled them in her hand as she patiently watched the horizon.

...

It was almost nightfall, but Rey could see the outline of the island. The rain was still coming down hard almost like it was mourning its loss. She took the Falcon off autopilot and prepared to land. 

There was a flash. A crack of lightning struck the ship, and Rey felt the Falcon dip towards the ocean. Every sensor in the cockpit wailed an angry warning before the power shut off. She rapidly tapped a few buttons, trying to bring the craft’s power back online, but her efforts were futile.

She pulled up on the rudders of the Falcon, and it jerked toward the ocean. If she used the momentum of the ship, she figured she might be able to crash into the island. Rey used all the strength she had to align the ship with the ocean. She jerked forward when the bottom of the ship bounced off the ocean and braced for the next impact.

The Falcon skipped along the waves at a dangerous pace toward the island. The pilot tried to apply the breaks, but they didn’t respond. There was nothing she could do to slow down the ship, and the island was coming up fast.

“Damnit,” Rey muttered under her breath and prepared to abandon the Falcon. She forced open the escape hatch and took one last glance back before she shut her eyes and dove into the cold, uninviting ocean. 

Even underwater, she could still hear the crash of the Millennium Falcon colliding into the rocky island. Rey tried to rise to catch her breath, but a wave pulled her under again. The water was freezing, but she felt the orange warmth of the remains of her ship on her skin. She rose again and barely got a breath of air before another wave pushed her under.

The wave slammed her into a rock. She desperately clung to it, gasping for air. It was dark, but the fire from the Falcon lit up the sky. Rey surveyed the wreckage from her rock and saw her fate. 

There was nothing left of the ship. All its scrap wouldn’t even sell for a quarter portion at the rate it was burning. She hoped she would be able to find what she was looking for in Ahch-To because she wasn’t going to be leaving for quite some time. 

It didn’t stop raining, but the waves calmed. Rey was finally able to let go of the rock and swim toward shore. 

Wet, cold, and exhausted, the girl slowly climbed the stone staircase leading to the huts. She had a fleeting hope that she would see the light of a fire from inside the hut at the top of the steps, but they were all dark. 

Loneliness swept over her. She didn’t know what she thought she would find. Luke was gone; she felt him go. She sighed and walked to the hut where she stayed when she first found Skywalker. Rey pushed open the door and went inside.

To her surprise, there was still some kindling in the fire pit in the hut’s center. It was too dark to see where the fire starter was, and she unconsciously reached for the lightsaber on her belt. She had forgotten for a moment it was broken, but upon realization of its uselessness, she discarded it on the floor carelessly.

She gave up on the fire and began stripping out of her drenched clothes. She tossed her belt next to her bed and took her hair out of her buns, squeezing the water out of her brown locks. She peeled away the tunic sticking to her skin and hung it over the chair to dry, and she did the same with her pants. 

Cool wind seeped in through the cracks in the rock hut, and Rey shivered. She rubbed her hands against her arms and then crawled under the blanket of her bed. She wasn’t ready to sleep, but she knew she couldn’t parade around the island in the dark and in wet clothes. She would have to wait until morning. 

Pervasive thoughts tried to creep into her mind, but she pushed them away. Rey didn’t want to think about what was ahead; she didn’t even know entirely what she was searching for. Luckily, the bed and blanket provided enough warmth and comfort for the girl to unknowingly drift into sleep.


	8. Chapter 8

Gasping for air, Kylo Ren’s eyes abruptly opened to his quiet, dark apartment. Sweat poured down his scarred face as he unsuccessfully tried to gather himself from the floor. His heartbeat was weak, and his body trembled from exhaustion from his recent venture. 

It was some time before he gathered the strength to move. His legs fumbled beneath him, threatening to give at any moment, but he managed to pull himself close enough to his bed before he collapsed on it. The softness of the bed offered little reprieve to his aching body. 

Ren might have ignored the pain if his planetary projection produced results, but the stinging pain was a reminder that he still didn’t know where to start looking for the Jedi girl. Rey was a mystery to him. His mother had offered him one lead, to a planet he hadn’t returned since his adolescence, but he thought it rather unlikely. He thought it dubious that she would travel unaccompanied to a planet where she had never been given her inclination to gravitate toward familiarity. 

Perhaps that was the answer. Not to look to where she was going but where she had been. 

That certainly would narrow his search to a handful of planets. Ren began to retrace her life as he knew it, remembering the flickers of the girl’s past he saw when they touched hands. He knew well the scavenger had spent the beginning and majority of her life on Jakku waiting for her dead parents to come home, but he had told her the truth... even if she didn’t want to believe it. However, the likelihood that she would “find her own path,” as his mother said, by returning to a now meaningless wasteland was improbable. 

His memory brought him back to Takodana, where he encountered the Jedi for the first time. If she had any friends, any attachments there, they were unknown to Ren. Despite the planet’s undeniable beauty, it was unlikely that a lush landscape alone would warrant another visit. 

Starkiller Base was nothing more than an asteroid field, and part of the First Order’s fleet was still investigating Crait, so that left...

The island.

The image felt like it had been burned into his mind after he saw it in Rey’s memories on Starkiller Base. He could see the lone island, surrounded by an endless ocean, but its location he could not place with certainty. Ren could only infer that the island he saw and the one that hid Luke Skywalker from Snoke and himself were one and the same. 

The scavenger was on the island when their hands touched, when he saw her past, but unlike her, he didn’t see her future or even her present for that matter. He doubted she had intentionally blocked him from knowing her location, him knowing that she was with Skywalker, but she had proven herself more adept in the Force than she often realized, so it wasn’t unnecessarily out of the question.

And he saw what incredible strength it took to rip that snippet of information from her in the throne room when Snoke invaded her mind. Snoke was the only one who knew the location of the island, but he was dead, and vacant heads offer no memories even if he was strong enough to finagle the location out of his master’s mind. 

Ren’s gaze turned toward the window overlooking the ship. He looked past the impressive craft to the twinkling stars beyond. He had narrowed down the possibilities of where the Jedi girl could be from millions to just a few, but he was no closer to finding her. He balled his hand into a fist and punched the mattress of his bed in frustration. 

How could one girl, a scavenger at that, so easily evade him? The Supreme Leader of the First Order whose network spread to every corner of the galaxy. Master of the Knights of Ren, Heir apparent to Darth... 

He realized those titles were as pointless as they were meaningless to him. Even commanding the largest military presence since the Empire, it wasn’t enough to reach her, wherever she was. 

For the first time in his life, he felt small. His entire life he always gotten what he wanted, whether it happened on its own or by force. The legend of his ancestry, his name, his titles, he didn’t care about them as much as he thought he would have. They were all worthless to him in the face of what he truly desired. 

The bed shuddered beneath the Supreme Leader, and it startled him at first. He had been alone in his apartment; he had made sure that there would be no disturbances while he was there lest the intruder wished to perish slowly and painfully. Ren looked around the room, and he saw someone curled up at the opposite edge of his bed. 

A girl laid on her side facing Ren with her bare legs to her chest and her uncovered arms wrapped around them. Her brown hair was a tangled, wet mess on her head, and her face was pale, almost white, as was the rest of her skin. It was apparent that she didn’t know where she was or what she was doing because her eyes did not open. Her chest slowly rose and fell with her breathing as she slept undisturbed. 

Ren realized the girl was almost completely undressed save the bindings around her chest. His eyes drifted over her entirety, and his pulse quickened. He took in the softness of her countenance, the shape of her lips, the way her unscarred, unblemished skin gleamed even in the darkness of the room. The bindings that held her chest were as wet as her hair and allowed Ren’s imagination to easily design what was hidden under the cloth. His eyes hungrily continued down to the delicate curvature of her hips and— 

The bed shook slightly again, and Ren realized it was his visitor’s shivering. He slowly reached over a hand, and before he even touched her, he felt the cold radiating from her skin. Moving silently as to not wake her, he slid off the bed and gathered the blanket from his side of the bed. He wasn’t sure if it would do any good but considering that he once felt the same rain she felt in one of their Force bonds previously, it was worth a shot. He gently laid it over her and walked back to the opposite side of the bed. 

It took a bit, but she did stop shaking, and the color slowly came back to her cheeks. He sat motionless on the bed next to her, worried that even the slightest movement would wake her, and she would instantly end this blissful moment. 

How could someone be so close but light years away? Even mere inches from him, he could not ascertain her location. The idea both frustrated and fascinated Kylo Ren, to have something he desired within his grasp but yet out of reach. There were no words he could conjure that would accurately describe what he felt when he saw her, to know someone’s history so entirely and simultaneously know nothing about them at all. 

His hand slowly reached across the bed, fingers trembling nervously the closer he came. If he was going to find her, he had to know where to begin to look, a system, a sector, anything. The tips of his fingers grazed the skin of her hand, and she did not stir at his touch. He slipped into her mind and carefully sifted through her thoughts. 

And he found what he needed.


	9. Chapter 9

Early morning brought the daylight as the sun emerged from the clouds. Its rays shone through the cracks of the Jedi’s hut and onto her face. Her eyes opened slowly, and she could hear the gentle waves of the ocean pushing against the cliffs below. She was surprisingly warm despite going to bed last night drenched and mostly unclothed. She smiled softly as she enjoyed the euphoria of warmth and a full night’s rest. 

But the moment was fleeting. Her vision focused, and she remembered she was alone on Ahch-To with an irreparable ship. Rey stood up from the bed and slipped into her clothes. She shivered as she put them on. They were still a little damp, but at least they weren’t soaking wet anymore. She walked to the door and looked back at the interior of the hut, contemplating if she would rather just lay in bed than face the disappointing loneliness of the desolate island. 

She pushed open the door and remembered she wasn’t entirely alone. Three natives clearing debris from the previous night’s storm acknowledged her, albeit grumpily, as she stood among the huts. However considering the language barrier and her awful first impression from her first visit to the island, she might as well be alone. 

Her heart pounded as she walked toward Luke’s hut and gently opened the door. She didn’t expect much knowing he was gone, but if he kept anything that would answer her questions, she needed to find it. 

The hut was bare. The desk was empty, the bed made, and the fire pit cleared of kindling. There was no evidence anyone had ever been there, let alone Luke who had spent years on the island. Rey assumed the caretakers must have emptied the room of its contents after realizing his passing. To the Lanai, he was just another Jedi come and gone, his possessions thrown aside to make room for the next, not knowing he was the last Jedi that would stay there. Rey couldn’t stop the tears from streaming down her face. 

Unable to bear looking at the empty hut any longer, she closed the door behind her. Luckily, she thought, if Skywalker did not leave her anything to guide her, the Jedi temple’s library could point her in the right direction. 

She hastened her pace down the steps of the cliff, her feet barely touching the stone step before she moved on to the next. The wind from the sea blew cool, salty air against her face and dried her wet cheeks. The wind changed directions, and she caught the smell of something strange and unusual, not like the crisp, refreshing air of the island she had come to know. 

The smell of destruction. 

It was unmistakable. Rey came to recognize the smell all too well over the past few months. It was almost always the same no matter the reason. Corpses on the battlefield in Takodana, Starkiller Base falling apart, it was all the same. The smell was the same regardless which side, the Light or the Dark, prevailed. Destruction did not care whose cause was righteous. 

Stopping at the foot of the stone staircase, Rey listened to the world around her and heard nothing. At this distance, she would have heard whispers, the same ones that distracted and guided her to the library when she first arrived on the Ahch-To. She sprinted toward where she remembered the tree to be and found nothing but a smoldering pile of grey ash. 

Kneeling down, she ran her hands through the ashes of the temple, hoping perhaps something was hidden. The ashes turned to dust and slid through her fingers and into the wind. There was nothing left to salvage. The library, the books, the entire Jedi religion had been destroyed. 

Rey sat back distraught, taking in her present situation. She had no mentor, no guidance, and nowhere to start. The remnants of the Millennium Falcon lay destroyed in the bottom of the ocean. She came back to the island with the same purpose as her first journey: to find her place in the world, but similar to her last, it was fruitless. 

_Let the past die... Kill it if you have to._ His words echoed in her mind. She picked up another handful of ash and watched the wind whisk it away. 

Perhaps Luke got his final wish after all. By destroying the last of the Jedi texts, he took the remaining knowledge with him to the grave. The Force was strong with her, but she was no Jedi master. Three lessons with her mentor barely even scratched the surface of everything she could learn, and without a teacher, her progress would stagnate. 

Looking over the ash pile, Rey realized something felt off different than the last time. Trying to place what changed, she closed her eyes and reached out into the Force. She expected to find the Darkness that destruction wrought that replaced the once present blinding Light, but she did not. It was something else, neither Dark nor Light but in between. It didn’t have the same attraction, the pull to either extreme that she felt previously. Nonetheless, it was almost peaceful even if she couldn’t explain what was happening in the Force. 

Her eyes opened, and she rose from the ground and walked back up the staircase. There was only one place left to look. She passed the huts and made way up the hill to the cliff where Luke gave her first lesson. 

By the time she reached the top, the muscles in her legs quivered under her weight, and her breathing was heavy and uneven after the massive climb. She held her back against the wall until she caught her breath and walked toward the ledge overlooking the island. 

Even though Luke was gone, Rey could still catch glimpses of him here, ripples in the Force during his final moments. Her hand traced along the stone seat of the cliff. She didn’t understand how, but she could sense that he was proud of her. Regardless of his initial hesitation to teach her, he believed he gave her the tools to continue the Jedi Order. 

He was wrong. There was still so much she didn’t know, so much she had yet to understand. Luke taught her the basic principles but not how to control the Force. Most of what she learned about the Force, she learned by accident or by absorbing it through— 

The teacher she never wanted. The man she failed to redeem. Ben Solo, or rather Kylo Ren. 

As much as the young Jedi would never want to admit, her opposite in the Dark had taught her much of what she now knows of the Force. She inadvertently learned how to control the Force around her when she pushed into his mind on Starkiller Base and again when her hand touched his. 

Not that any of it mattered anymore. No one knew where she was, and she was trapped on the island without transport and without any means of communication. She could lower the barrier she created to keep Ren away, but she was still angry with him for trying to convert her to the Dark Side. 

It did certainly make her feel guilty though. Occasionally she would feel his sadness and loneliness seep into her. She could feel him pushing at the barrier she forged between them, sometimes gently, and others more violently or desperately, she couldn’t tell which. Regardless, she wasn’t ready to face him, not yet anyway. 

The sun was starting to set, its orange glow dancing on the ocean. Perhaps she’d enjoy the peace and the lack of responsibility for awhile. She began walking to the entrance of the cave to make her descent back to the hut for the evening when she saw her staff leaning against the wall. She twirled it in her hand, almost disappointed it didn’t make the same electrical sound that her lightsaber did, and she stepped out of the cave. 

Halfway down the hill to the huts, the girl an unnatural light off in the distance above the ocean, and the sight made her stop dead in her tracks as thoughts raced through her head. She didn’t tell anyone she was leaving, let alone where she was going. The only people she thought that knew the location of the island other than Chewie were dead. It is possible that he came looking for her. 

As the light and the craft that bore them drew closer, Rey realized it wasn’t a Resistance ship and looked around for a place to hide. She wasn’t sure what was coming, but it couldn’t be good. Considering her only line of defense was her staff, she thought it best to hide and wait for the threat to pass, but her options for hiding spots were few and far between. The one that would offer the most protection, the dark hole with the mirror, was on the other side of the island. Even sprinting, there was no feasible was she could make it there before the intruder touched ground, so she retreated back up the stairs to the cliff hoping that the exhaustive climb would preclude her discovery. 

She made it back to the top of the incline and peered out over the ledge. It was dark now, but she could see the ship, and from what shape she could see in the moonlight, it appeared to be a lone TIE fighter landing on the island. Sitting on the hard ground, Rey gripped her staff tightly in her hand and waited.


	10. Chapter 10

Ren had left the Supremacy almost immediately. General Hux had not yet returned from his mission, so there was little resistance from the remaining commanding officers when he demanded his ship prepared. Most were still terrified to even think in their Supreme Leader’s presence given the last incident on the bridge. They didn’t even object when Kylo Ren demanded they wipe all logs, in conflict Hux’s stern orders, that would indicate his departure. They valued their lives more than they were afraid of their General’s censure.

Other than the clothes on his back and lightsaber on his waist, Ren hadn’t loaded anything into the TIE fighter. Whether or not he was unconsciously anticipating that he wouldn’t be returning to the Supremacy, he wasn’t entirely sure, but his main concern was leaving the ship as quickly and quietly as possible. The lack of preparation made him uneasy.

But she was definitely here. 

Since Kylo Ren broke the atmosphere of the far-flung planet, he could feel her presence rippling through the Force guiding the way to her. She wouldn’t be hard to find now. Now that they weren’t a galaxy apart, he could almost see their bond, their connection through the Force, solidifying the closer he came to the girl. His last encounter with the Jedi in the Force had altered something, even if his counterpart was unaware of the change. Her location resonated through the galaxy when the tips of his fingers grazed her skin.

Seeing the planet in person confirmed what he already knew. The grey ocean waves surged against the rocky island, the same images he saw in the Rey’s head, in her dreams, when he interrogated her on Starkiller Base. 

The grass swayed gently in the wind as Ren exited the TIE fighter, and the ground squished under his feet. He frowned, glaring at his now mud-covered black boots, and then looked up at his surroundings trying to place the girl’s general direction. Her presence in the Force was almost overwhelming, intoxicating as he oriented himself toward a set of stone steps leading up the hill. He started climbing the stairway.

If the scavenger wasn’t expecting him before, she certainly knew he was here now. The TIE fighter was quiet but not invisible. Given that she had spent some time there, chances are she would probably try to hide, but there were only so many places she could hide on an island. Ren started to think about how she would react and what he would say. He had spent hours thinking about this moment before, planning exactly how it would play out, only to find now he was unsure, and any words he thought of saying before escaped him.

At the top of the stairs, the tall man stopped to catch his breath and looked around him. Stone huts surrounded him, and although he knew, could sense that the girl wasn’t occupying one now, she had been there recently. Her presence in the Force created a signature that lingered even after she left, but there was also another signature there as well. It was familiar, and he recalled the reason why the girl had come to the island in the first place: Luke Skywalker. He scowled at the thought but brushed it off, remembering that his former master was no more. 

Closing his eyes, Kylo Ren reached out into the Force, looking for the beacon that was Rey. She was still further and at an even higher altitude. His eyes opened again, and they quickly found another stone staircase leading up the tallest mountain in the center of the island. He followed it.

By the time he had reached the top, he could hardly see where the staircase finally ended and what was ahead. The sun was completely gone now, and what little light cast from the shining moon wasn’t enough to offer any guidance or direction. His eyes weren’t adjusted to the darkness of the wild, the majority of his life spent aboard well-lit First Order ships. His hand found the lightsaber on his belt and ignited it.

The light revealed a stone building before him, and he entered. He felt his connection in the Force with the girl tighten. She was close. Inching toward the corner, he peered around.

There was a yell, and something hard cracked against the back of his head. It caught him off guard. The blow disoriented him, and the lightsaber fell from his hand. Now unprotected, his hand covered his head as he bolted to what he remembered to be the other side of the room hopefully out of reach of his assailant. Ren couldn’t tell if the hit darkened the edge of his vision or if the lightsaber went out. 

Another blow hit him in the stomach, and he toppled over, writhing in pain. He mustered enough strength to look up and search for an exit. Across the room, moonlight illuminated an opening, a doorway to the outside. He rolled, dodging another blow from his unknown attacker and darted to the door. 

It wasn’t the exit he was hoping for. He had to stop abruptly or risk falling off the cliff. Kylo Ren could see the entire island and the ocean beyond reflecting the moonlight in the distance, but there was nowhere to go. He was trapped and unarmed. Remembering his power, he raised his hand and steadied himself, preparing to use the Force to send his attacker flying away.

Out of the darkness, a figure slowly emerged in the moonlight, a long, straight weapon drawn. Ren’s hand fell to his side when he recognized who it was. 

It was her. 

Twirling her staff threateningly, she advanced toward him, but Ren did not move. Rey jumped and tackled him to the ground. He made no attempt to fight back as she pinned him to the floor, her legs on either side of his chest. His hands rose to head and opened in submission as she pushed the hilt of her staff into his throat, cutting off his air.

“Why did you come here?” The girl snarled at him.


	11. Chapter 11

Even if Kylo Ren knew what he wanted to say, the staff Rey held against his throat cut off his oxygen. He didn’t try to fight her off, but when he finally started gasping for air, she relented. She still gripped the staff in her hand but shifted her weight back to her legs. Ashamed of what she had done, ashamed that she allowed the Dark Side to control her, she rose and retreated to the darkness of the room behind them. She sat next to the pool and dropped her staff on the ground next to her. Cupping her face in her shaking hands, hot tears silently streamed from her eyes.

Finally recovered from his lack of oxygen, Ren climbed back onto his feet and made his way to Rey. He was silent, his words still escaping him as he sat on the ground beside her. He could sense the conflict in her, the battle between the Light and Dark fighting to decide what to do. Part of her wanted to kill him for the monster he was, and the other begged for understanding.

Regardless, his presence comforted the crying Jedi. She couldn’t tell if it was because she had been some time without human contact or if it was because it was him. Out of impulse and fear, she had almost killed him without a second thought, without knowing why he came to Ahch-To. 

“Why are you here?” Rey choked out, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “Don’t you have a galaxy to rule, Supreme Leader?” Her words were icy but true; he did have a galaxy to govern. Responses to her question swirled in his mind as he tried to choose the right one. He could feel her eyes on him, searching for the answer he had yet to give. 

“You. I came for you.” Kylo Ren said quietly.

“For what? To kill me?” Rey questioned. She watched his eyes widen at her suggestion, and she shrugged it off. “To make me your empress?” Her tone was dark and vicious, clawing at her visitor. “To make me your prisoner?” The loose rocks rumbled on the floor as her anger seeped into the Force.

Ren winced at her words; her last couple accusations struck deep. As much as he wanted her to join him, to rule the galaxy at his side, he wouldn’t, and couldn’t, force her. He perhaps could make her stay with him physically, but mentally on the other hand, her mind was a fortress from his control. Her mind had been repeatedly invaded by uninvited guests that any attempt of mind control in the Force would be futile. While it frustrated him, it also intrigued him. 

Feeling his sadness, Rey calmed herself, and the rocks dropped to the floor. The sound startled her, quickly realizing that in her anger, she had unknowingly manipulated the world around her. Ren looked down at the now still rocks at her feet.

“You still need a teacher,” he muttered.

“Just because you killed Skywalker doesn’t mean you get to also assume his position as my teacher,” Rey scoffed. “You already assumed position as Supreme Leader. Isn’t that enough?” She stood up and move to leave, but Ren rose and blocked her exit. Obviously frustrated, the girl stopped and looked at him.

He towered over her. She tried to quickly move by him, but his body mimicked hers, and she was now mere inches from him. Her gaze met his dark, brown eyes as they stared back down at her. They were deep, endless like the ocean around the island. Despite his climb to the apex of the island, he smelled surprisingly fresh and clean. She let her own feelings go, and she felt the penetrating sadness and longing exuding from Ren. Sadness at her rejection of him yet again and longing—for her. It was raw and genuine, and Rey didn’t quite understand it. 

Sensing that she was no longer going to storm off, Ren let her pass through, and he walked beside her through the entrance to the stone room. It was still dark, but the moon was shining so brightly they could easily see the stone staircase leading back to the huts. They wordlessly descended the steps together. 

Without looking back at her visitor, she approached the door to her hut. Hand on the door, she stopped.

“Goodnight,” Rey said.

“Goodnight,” Ren echoed. She pushed through the door into her small hut and disappeared behind it. As much as he wanted to follow her, he guessed that it would probably be best if he not. He walked into the hut across from hers. 

Exhausted, Rey collapsed onto her bed without undressing, but sleep did not come. Her body was tired, but her mind raced. She couldn’t fathom why Kylo Ren came to the island, what his intent could possibly be. She assumed that he had come to claim her, take her prisoner aboard his ship, but she was wrong. The Jedi girl mulled over ideas, both reasonable and far-fetched, as to why her visitor traveled across the galaxy to find her. 

He found her, even while she was completely alone on an uncharted island in the furthest reaches of the galaxy. Though she had closed off their connection in the Force, he pushed through, and now she could feel the strength of their bond pulsating between them. Since he landed, Rey thought at times she could feel the bond tug, trying to pull her closer to him, but she wasn’t entirely sure. 

Maybe if he had come all this way to find her, there was still hope for Ben Solo to return. She had seen the conflict in him before, and it hadn’t diminished in their time apart. If she could bring him back from the Dark Side, perhaps she would better understand her own purpose along the way. 

She rolled over and let her eyes close. Her own mind was clear of thoughts, but his wasn’t. His intense feelings of desire and longing seeped through to her. The girl tried to shove them out, but they were overpowering. 

Some time later, the feelings Ren put out in the Force finally subsided. Rey figured he had finally fallen asleep, and she followed.


	12. Chapter 12

“Why?” 

The man’s eyes blinked open. It was early morning, the morning sun peeking through the small holes between the stones of the Ren’s hut. The brown-haired girl stood above him questioningly.

“Why what?” Ren said unamused, eyes locked with hers.

“Why did you come here? With Snoke dead, you were—are Supreme Leader of the First Order. The Republic, destroyed. The Resistance reduced to almost nothing. Why save a scavenger, a nobody?” Rey felt her face redden and looked away. Ren felt the sting of his words twisted back on him. “Give me an honest answer.”

Ren sat up in his cot, and Rey took a seat on a nearby chair. His voice was quiet but gentle. “I have never lied to you,” he said awkwardly. Rey shook her head, not believing him. Frustration swelled in each of them; him, for Rey not believing in him; her, for Ren not giving her a straightforward answer. He felt the anger rising in Rey and suppressed his own. He closed his eyes and reached out in his mind to her, hoping she would allow the bond to reopen. To his surprise, she did.

 _If there are words to express this, they are unknown to me._ Rey heard his words echo in her mind. She could sense his shyness, his uncertainty even in his mind when speaking to her through their bond. 

“Try,” Rey said aloud.

_Our stories have, for whatever reason, intertwined. The connection we share, it has to be... it is more than a bridge Snoke created between our minds. I saw the future the night we touched hands, our future. A world without the Jedi, the Sith, the First Order, the Resistance. We were to rule together —_

Rey slammed the connection closed and wordlessly stormed off to the entrance of the hut. Before her hand touched the door, she stopped and looked back. Rejection written over his face, Ren stared woefully back at her. Even with their bond closed, she could feel the pain emanating from him. She sighed as she walked back to where he was and sat down beside him. He didn’t look at her now. They sat in uncomfortable silence for some time.

Rey closed her eyes and reopened the bond. He was aware of its opening but kept his thoughts quiet. He wasn’t ready to speak, Rey’s rejection still pulling on him.

 _Let me show you._ His voice echoed in her thoughts. Rey felt the fingers of his large hand intertwine with hers. He lowered the barrier guarding his memories, and Rey slid into his mind. Everything was dark. She felt the cold darkness of the Force inside him, the same Force that she drew upon when she attacked him the night before. She could feel the strength of his emotions, his rage, his sadness swirling around her in the abyss. 

She came across a memory she knew, but she saw it through his eyes. They were back on the Rebel base on Crait. She was kneeling on the floor of the base, gold dice in his hand. She looked up and saw herself loading the Resistance fighters on the Falcon. The stab of rejection and desire pierced her heart as she watched herself close the door to the ship. She pulled away from the memory, the intensity of his emotions in that moment too much for her to contain. Guilt washed over her as she understood she was the reason for his pain. He couldn’t understand why she abandoned him to save the dying Resistance. She a swirl of Darkness, begging her to stay, and she almost wanted to, almost did. 

The raw emotion was enticing and in its own way beautiful. She forced herself away from the memory and regained her composure. She could see light ahead of her, distant, but bright. She pushed through the darkness toward it. Other memories called out to her, adamantly trying to pull her back into the Darkness away from the Light. She struggled to ignore them. 

As she came closer to the light, she felt the same Force that was present within her. Peace and serenity warmed her as she continued to move closer to its brightness. Finally upon it, she found another memory, but it wasn’t exactly that. It was more of a thought, a dream, but it was so clear. Two people, a man dressed in formal attire and a woman in a beautiful, streaming gown stood hand in hand in front of a large audience. It was apparent that this event preceded any before it. They were cheering and celebrating because the Great War had ended with a union. From the ashes of the fallen First Order and the collapsing Resistance, the King of Darkness rose to meet the Queen of Light. Rey was too far away to see the faces of the couple. She reached out to the two under the alter. They were not opposites as she originally anticipated. The King of Darkness’s heart was touched by the Light and the Queen’s by the Dark. Their fates were intertwined to bring balance to the galaxy. There was no Jedi, no Sith, just the Grey. 

The scene flew out of reach as the room crashed around her. Hand outstretched gently touching a hand belonging to another version of herself. Rey realized that she was looking through Ren’s eyes again. She could feel the connection severed as Luke Skywalker destroyed the small hut.

Rey retreated back into her own mind and into her own thoughts. She took a moment to absorb everything that she saw before she allowed herself to fully come back to reality. She felt Ren’s hand still holding hers as she opened her eyes. 

Rey sat quietly next to Ren as she struggled to find the right words. She felt his uneasiness beside her, almost wincing waiting for her response, but she wasn’t quite ready to articulate her thoughts into words. She closed her eyes and allowed him to creep into the warm Light of her mind just enough to assure him she wasn’t going to reject him again. He understood her present inability, and he relaxed. Rey felt him gently nudging the edges of the barrier she created to preclude him from seeing the rest of her thoughts. When he realized she wasn’t ready to let him in completely, he didn’t push any further, but he did still remain in her Light, basking in its warmth.

She retreated behind the barrier to think alone. Was she really that blind? How could she not have seen everything that was so plainly before her. She could no longer deny that their fates weren’t connected, that much was obvious. Her ignorance in believing she could bring Ben Solo back to the Light blatantly disregarded the Darkness hidden in the corner of her own mind.

She knew the feelings he had for her were beyond anything communicable; she felt it too. The Light blinded her to the intensity of their connection, but she could see clearly now. She could feel the gravity the Force created to draw them together. Rey felt him gently squeeze her hand, and electricity surged through her. She opened her eyes and looked over at Ren.

He embarrassedly turned his glance away from her and pulled his hand away, making a pitiful attempt to find the fact that he had been staring. Rey smiled sweetly at him and turned to face him. Her hand reached up and touched his cheek, and the dark-haired man flinched at her touch. Her smile faded as her thumb traced the scar on his face.

“I’m sorry I’ve hurt you,” Rey said. She wasn’t just sorry about the physical pain that she wrought but the emotional pain as well. His gaze rose to meet hers again. Though the words were unspoken, she could see in his eyes that he understood what she meant. Staring into his dark eyes, she felt herself slipping into the Darkness of his mind again. It wasn’t the cold abyss it was before but overflowing burning desires... desires of her. 

She felt herself shoved out of his mind. He hadn’t realized that she had crept back in again, and he knew his present thoughts were at the forefront of his mind. Feeling ashamed of his thoughts, he pulled away from Rey’s touch. 

“Ben,” she said quietly. He closed his eyes, expecting the worst. He felt her slide closer to him. He opened his eyes, unsure of what to expect. Rey leaned forward and pressed her lips gently against his. They both felt electricity surge through their bodies as they touched. Rey pulled back, face red with embarrassment. 

“I’m sorry I shouldn’t have—” His lips kissed hers again before she could finish her sentence. He let his dark desires overwhelm him, and he kissed her again with more urgency, pushing her down onto the bed where they sat. She ran her fingers through his long hair. He shivered in delight as his hungry eyes stared down at her. She kissed his neck and felt his Darkness spill over into her. His Darkness was so warm and inviting she allowed herself to be swallowed by it, and the Darkness hidden in her own mind swelled, overshadowing the Light.

Ben pulled away from her, and his brow furrowed. The disheveled girl looked at him confusedly, wondering if she had done something wrong. 

“Your Light—” he stammered out. “It disappeared.” Rey sat up, ready to reassure him that she was fine and would be fine, but before she could speak, he rose from the bed and walked to the door of the hut. Opening the door, he stopped and looked back at her, hurt written plainly on her face. “Rey, I don’t want to corrupt you. I won’t destroy who you are for my own desires.”

He walked through the door, and the door closed behind him.


	13. Chapter 13

Sitting by herself in Ren’s hut, Rey was hurt by her dark visitor’s abandonment.

On one hand, the act was kind; Ren was trying to protect her. He was even concerned, caring, and selfless, not wanting to erupt the Darkness building inside her, muddying her Light. It was foreign, having someone care so genuinely about her well-being. She spent her whole life on Jakku unwanted and unappreciated. She only caught glimpses of care among the few Resistance fighters she had called friends, but even that was fleeting.

Regardless, the corruption of her innocence was not for him to decide. There was a balance in the Force; the adage was burned into her mind. Perhaps if the Darkness grew in her, the Light would emerge in her equal. She wasn’t sure.

The scavenger had felt alone before, that much wasn’t new to her, but rejection certainly was. Her heart ached, and the pain resonated in her chest. She closed her eyes and called out to him in the Force. 

He didn’t answer her. She couldn’t feel him across their bond either.

Rey rose from the bed and exited the hut. The sun blinded her, and she blinked until her eyes adjusted to the light. He wasn’t there. She looked up the hill, to the cliff where they were the night before, but there was nothing to indicate that was the way he went. She walked slowly through the line of huts, contemplating where he could have went. The TIE fighter was still there, and since the Falcon was scrap metal lying in the bottom of the ocean, he was still on the island.

Something called to her in the Force, but it wasn’t who she wanted it to be. It was something else. Unlike the rest of the island, it was dark and cold but eerily inviting. She knew then where she needed to go. Almost sprinting, the Jedi slid down the hill and onto a ledge before a large hole in the ground, leading to ocean. There was no hesitation like there was the first time she came here; she jumped and let the darkness swallow her. There weren’t answers here before, but perhaps there might be now.

The ocean waves slammed her into the rock below, and she pulled herself out of the water. Still dripping, she made her way into the interior of the cavern and found what she was looking for.

Ren stood at the mirror, a hand against it. He wasn’t surprised when Rey walked up behind him, and he turned to her. “You shouldn’t have come,” he whispered. His gaze turned back to the mirror and he stared. He had seen something.

Reaching out for his hand, Rey hoped that her touch would let her pass freely through into his thoughts as it had before, but it didn’t. Accepting that she wouldn’t be able to finagle her way into his mind, she asked, “what did the mirror show you?”

“It’s none of your concern,” he answered absentmindedly, still fixated on the mirror. 

Rey fumed. “I’m perfectly capable of handling myself, Ben,” she snapped.

He blinked, and his gaze fell back to her, to the bright blue eyes staring back at him. His hand reached up and touched her face. “I know you are,” he finally said. The Jedi looked at him confused. “I cannot deny my feelings for you, but I will destroy you.” His voice was soft and shaky. 

“I will ruin you, like I’ve ruined everything else. We’ve been in close proximity for less than a day, and—” he trailed off. “You’re an angel,” Ren choked out. He ignored her scowl and continued, “you are the purest thing in this galaxy. In all my life, I have never met anyone who understood me, anyone who looked beyond the fact that I was Han Solo’s son or Darth Vader’s grandson, destined to follow the legends of my ancestry. Even knowing my past, knowing what I had done, you still believed that I could come back, even though I know myself that I am well beyond redemption being a viable option.” His hand dropped from her face and fell to his side. “I’m sorry I hurt you, but I will not stain your innocence to satisfy my own selfish desires.”

Rey shook her head, eyes watering. “Ben Solo, you can’t tell me what to do. I am not yours.” His head nodded in agreement, and he started walking away from her, back to the entrance of the cave. “But I want to be.” The words escaped her, and he stopped in his tracks. What she said surprised him, and it surprised her too, but she didn’t retract her statement. It was true. They had always been true; she just hadn’t realized it until that moment. Until the idea of his leaving broached her mind.

The barrier blocking his thoughts from hers vanished, and Rey felt his thoughts spill over. She could feel his conflicted mind, part wanting to run away, scared his feelings would ultimately lead to her destruction, and the other part begging for him to let go, to take her in his arms. She smiled softly.

“Let go,” Rey said. She didn’t have to say it twice. In an instant, Ben was back across the cave to her, picking her up in his arms. Her thin arms wrapped around his neck, her legs around his back as his hands slid down to her behind to hold her up as he pressed her against the wall.

Fingers gliding through his slightly damp hair, Rey pressed her lips against his. Despite his otherwise intimidating appearance, his lips were soft and warm. Whatever reservations he had before, they had melted away at her touch. The kiss was only broken by her hands sliding to hold his face, their foreheads pressed together, and Rey lost herself in the deep brown eyes staring ravenously back at her. The conflict she felt in him moments before had been replaced by resolve, a roaring fire of desire burning brightly against the abysmal Darkness of his mind. 

Ben shifted slightly, allowing one hand to effortlessly hold her up while the other slid around the base of her head and pulled her even closer to him, and his hungry kisses found her lips again. His fingers traced her nape up to her hair and gently wrapped his fingers around her brown locks. The foreign sensation sent goosebumps throughout her body. 

Every fiber of her being was screaming, begging for him to take her. Even in still damp clothes, she could feel the distinct wet heat burning between her legs. Her hands drifted away from his head and traced over his collarbone and continued downward. Her fingers rolled over the well-defined muscles of his chest through his shirt as her hands explored the body in front of her.

Between kisses, Rey playfully bit down on Ben’s bottom lip, and the sudden pain caught him off guard. His eyes searched her for a moment before the realization of what she did sent a surge of blood and heat to his loins. He smirked and let his cheek nuzzle hers before his lips descended past her face. She could feel his breath hot against her neck between his wet kisses. She felt his lips open, and his teeth gently bit down on the skin of her neck. Her head titled back, allowing him unhindered reign of her, and a moan escaped her lips. 

The sound drove him insane. His anxious excitement spilled over into the Force. His lips cupped the side of her neck and sucked, the pressure slowly bursting tiny blood vessels under her skin, and her fingers tangled in his hair as she let out another moan. Though she couldn’t see his face, she could feel his lips turn into another smirk.

 _I will make sure the entire galaxy knows that you belong to me._ His voice growled across the bond as he investigated his work, the purple bruise on her neck, marking her as his possession. Rey felt passion and desire oozing from his mind, and before she was able to catch herself, she had slipped into the Darkness of his thoughts.

He was holding back. His thoughts screamed in unison to take her, dominate her, make her his, but the Light in his mind overshadowed them all, terrified that a wrong move would scare her away. Every part of his mind wanted her. Even in the throws of passion, his desire was not just for her body. Ben wanted it all, her mind, body, and soul to be his.

With two fingers, she raised his chin so that her eyes would meet his. She smiled coyly. “Ben Solo, I will never belong to you.” In a blink of an eye, she had slipped from his grasp and stood on her feet away from him. She knew every word in that sentence was wrong, but she couldn’t help toying with him. Denying him what he wanted most sent rivers of excitement through her. She threw a smirk to him before she turned and started walking away.

He must have seen through her games, saw what she was feeling across their bond, because he chuckled at her attempt to leave. Before she made it two steps, his hands grabbed her hips and thrusted her back into him, the throbbing bulge hidden under his pants pressed against the small of her back. He lowered himself slightly and used his hands to guide her hips into his over and over. He kissed her neck, small, excited moans escaping his lips when his girth passed between her legs.

He let Rey continue the movement as his hands swept under her tunic, fingers gliding over her stomach to her breasts. He scowled irritably as his hands found the bindings that held her breasts tight to her chest, stopping his hands’ exploration of her skin. Before she could even offer to remove her shirt, Ben already slipped it over her head and was unraveling her bindings. When the last piece of cloth fell away, she turned to face him.

 _You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen._ His eyes fixated on her exposed body, committing every inch to memory. Hands at the small of her back, he pulled her closer to him and stooped down to kiss from her neck down to her collarbone. Wanting a more comfortable position, his fingers wrapped hers as he sat down on a rock beside him and guided her onto him. Once she was straddled across his lap, hands clasped around her back, his lips went back to her skin.

A gust of wind brought cold ocean air into the cavern, and Rey shivered, nipples hardening from the cold. It didn’t go unnoticed as Ben’s face moved toward one of her breasts and his large hand clasped the other. Fingers rubbing warmth onto one, he mouth took the other. His tongue gliding over it in circular motions, and Rey gasped, eyes rolling back and gripping his hair between her fingers. 

Their bodies were so in sync with each other, the Force, her Light and his Dark, melted and swirled together, breaking any barriers they created in their minds and allowed them to flow freely between the two. Rey felt Ben climb in and bask in the warmth of her Light, and she receded into his Darkness.

In their euphoric unity, Rey had found something floating around the corners of his mind, and she pulled from his touch, severing the connection. Ben cocked his head, confused as to why she broke their bond.

“It’s your first time,” she whispered.


	14. Chapter 14

Her words turned sour on her tongue. 

Rey felt almost instantaneous regret as soon as they had escaped her lips. She didn’t even know why she said it. Why him being a virgin mattered in the slightest. Was it shock that provoked her to say it? To believe that even in his training in the Dark Side, which thrived in the face of passion, he never engaged in any sexual act to strengthen his power? Did Snoke keep him locked away so tightly, that he never had human contact?

His silence was deafening.

_I would have thought Luke Skywalker would have imbued more principles of the Jedi Order in regards to attachment and abstinence._ His voice echoed in her thoughts. 

She swallowed. “What do you mean?” Rey asked inquisitively. 

He chuckled. _Ah, he didn’t tell you. Those who train in the Light are to remain free of any attachments, any possibility that someone they care for may be lost, thus turning them to the Dark Side. Considering his father, my grandfather, was lost in his anger after losing my grandmother, detachment was usually his first lesson._

His answer might have made sense if Ben hadn’t turned to the Dark Side. Rey couldn’t see why it persisted even after he destroyed the Jedi temple. Guilt rose in her throat, remembering that she, too, had almost succumbed to the Dark Side, allowed herself to become attached to someone, clouding her connection to the Light.

Moments ago, she would have given up everything she learned about the Force and let herself willingly be taken by the Darkness. She didn’t care about the Light then, but she remembered now. She slid from his lap and gathered her bindings, slowly wrapping them back around her chest before she slipped her tunic over her head. Ben hadn’t moved, but he watched her, feeling the change in her across their bond. He was silent, and so was she. 

_You will stand with me, Rey. I’ve seen it._ His gaze wandered back over to the mirror behind her. 

She rolled her eyes at him, beaming her newly strengthened resolve. “I will never be yours, Kylo Ren.”

He smirked at her. “We’ll see.” His confidence infuriated her, but she didn’t respond and began her climb out of the cavern. She didn’t look at him, but she felt his longing creep back into him.

...

The sun was high in the cloudless sky when Rey sat upon the raised rock overlooking the island on top of the mountain. Her long, wooden staff was where she had left it the last time she was here. She crossed her legs and closed her eyes, palms against her knees. Hearing the crash of the water below, she matched her breathing to the waves and cleared her mind. The sunlight was warm on her face, and the sounds of the world around her grounded her to the earth. 

She needed to remember the Light, the life in the Force around her to forget what happened. Luke had been right; she had gone straight to the Darkness, to the pretty eyes that awaited her there.

It wouldn’t happen again.

If the temptation was a test the universe had thrusted upon her, she had passed, albeit barely. Rey would continue to follow her path in the Light and the principles of the Jedi Order, even without any guidance from a Jedi Master. She would find a way.

“You still need a teacher.”

She tried to push his voice from her mind but quickly realized she couldn’t. He had been standing behind her. Her eyes opened and her head turned back to the opening of the cave behind her to see Ben leaning against the rock wall, watching her. She grimaced.

“What could you possibly teach me about the Light Side of the Force, Supreme Leader” she snarled as she spun around and raised the staff to his neck, almost touching his chin. He didn’t flinch, and with a flick of his wrist, the staff flew from her hands and over the cliff. 

“Well, the first lesson would be to stop acting so impulsively on your emotions,” he growled at her. “Don’t forget, I was also Skywalker’s Padawan for a time.” Rey nodded slowly, remembering that he had trained in both the Light and Dark Side with Luke and then with Snoke. If anyone else had offered to teach her, she probably would be more willing to learn, but she just couldn’t justify allowing him to be her teacher, to spend more time with him than she already had, creating more possibilities to turn her to the Dark Side. She felt him pry their bond open.

_After I destroyed Luke’s temple, I went to Snoke. He didn’t chastise me for my power like Skywalker but embraced it, let it run free. I had convinced a group of his students at the temple to join me, and they did. We became as you know them now, the Knights of Ren._ Rey shifted herself to face him, wondering where his story was leading. _We all trained together, spent every waking moment together. We destroyed everything that we had hated. We weren’t just comrades but close friends, and one of the Knights I had a particular close relationship. We spent hours training, dueling while the others slept. He wasn’t as strong with the Force as you, but he was more adept with a lightsaber even surpassing my ability._

_There was a pocket of Resistance on a planet Snoke sent us to snuff out, our final mission to complete our training, after which he would declare the Master of the Knights of Ren, a sort of competition amongst ourselves to prove who was the best. In pouring down rain, the seven of us defeated an entire army._

Rey could see the memory he was drawing from. She had been there when she had first touched Luke’s lightsaber. 

_I killed the last soldier, and we stood proud in a field of corpses. Snoke was pleased but not satisfied. He claimed that to name the Master of the Knights, one of us had to kill the strongest fighter in the group. They hesitated, not wanting to attack me, but I didn’t. I killed my friend. While I was able to draw strength upon the raw emotion of my loss, the anger toward my mentor for commanding me to murder my friend, I vowed I would never become attached to anyone again._

Ben’s sorrow drifted into Rey, and she felt tears forming in her eyes. She understood why he had remained abstinent for all that time. Snoke could destroy, would destroy anyone he cared about, if it meant his power growing stronger in the Dark Side. Snoke made him kill his father and was going to make him kill her.

Until Ben killed him. 

The realization hit her like a ton of bricks, and her blue eyes rose to meet his. She had been wrong. He hadn’t killed Snoke to secede him, to take control of the First Order; he was protecting the only thing in the universe he cared about: her.


	15. Chapter 15

The next few days Ben and Rey spent training on the island. When the sun rose in the morning, they left their huts and didn’t return until the sun had retreated beyond the horizon. He had closed their bond during their sessions so that Rey wouldn’t be able to anticipate his movements when he put her teachings to the test. 

Today, he was gauging her ability to keep her emotions under control. It wasn’t going well. Rather than dodging his attacks like he had taught her, she kept countering his blows and moving back to the offensive. 

“Argh! I’m going to kill you, Ben Solo, you wait,” Rey muttered through heavy breathing.

“If you were going to kill me, you would have when you were on my ship,” Ben replied effortlessly as he bent backward away from her oncoming staff, missing his face by mere inches. Her face scrunched at his statement. As much as it made her angry, he was right. 

This lesson was probably the hardest, learning to suppress her emotions and curb her impulses. Especially considering that he knew exactly what buttons to press to make her angry. He knew all her triggers: her parents, or lack thereof, the Resistance, and even him. She couldn’t help but want to smash his face with the end of her staff, the things he said to her.

“Stop fighting me, and _dodge_ ,” he bellowed. Frustrated with her lack of progress, he sent the staff in her hand flying out of reach. 

Rey closed her eyes and cleared her mind. She focused on the sun beating down on her, the gentle breeze blowing wisps of her hair around her face, the sounds of the waves crashing against the shore. She let her emotions drain away, and let the Force be her eyes and guide her movements.

Ben’s steps were quiet, but she could feel him moving through the Force toward her, ready to attack, and he charged. She side-stepped his first blow and his second. She could hear his breathing grow heavy as she continued again and again to dodge his attacks. Out of breath, he stopped. Rey opened her eyes and found Ben stooped over, his hands on his knees holding himself up.

“About time,” he muttered between breaths. 

...

That night, they sat together in Rey’s hut, cooking the monstrous fish they had caught together earlier that day over the fire. Ben lifted a bottle to his lips, and he gulped down the white liquid. Rey shuddered at the sight.

“I don’t know how you drink that swill,” she said.

“It’s just milk,” he replied nonchalantly.

“That thing giggles when you milk it,” Her nose wrinkled in disgust; he chuckled at her. 

The fish was finally cooked through, and Rey pulled it from a fire and cut away two pieces for them. They ate in silence, each exhausted from the day’s training. Not that Rey could think of anything to talk about anyway. Her mind was just as tired as her body, and for once, she appreciated her own thoughts, not having to control her emotions.

_You know, for someone who was so concerned about my virginity, you have little care for your own._

Rey almost choked. When she managed to swallow her food, she stammered out a confused, “what?” His voice had caught her off guard. She hadn’t even realized the bond had been open, let alone that he had slipped into her mind. Retreating back into her own thoughts, she skimmed through the memories he had come upon. 

“I’m s—” He stammered, before returning to speaking over the bond. _You were like reading an open book. There were no barriers._ Rey could feel his guilt spilling over into her, but she wasn’t mad. To be honest, if she could slid into his mind without him knowing, she would have done the same. _But so you know, I’ll probably kill him if I ever find him._ Rey looked at him bewildered and went back to investigating the memory he found. She found it and felt Ben watching it with her.

She was back on Jakku, in the little piece of scrap metal she called home. There weren’t as many etchings on the wall as there were when she left. She was barely seventeen then. She was with a boy, Owen, who just turned eighteen, blond-haired and blue-eyed. His parents were smugglers, stopping to empty their cargo ship of their most recent haul. They met for just a few moments when they waited in line together to trade. He was fascinated by her, by the idea that she was living all on her own without parents watching her every movement. He asked where she was staying, and she told him. That night, he had snuck out of his parents ship to meet her.

They had sat up for most of the night talking under the stars. The blue-eyed boy complained about his parents, envious of her living by herself. She didn’t reveal that she was jealous of him, having parents who cared about him, who were probably worried about where he had gone off to in the middle of the night. They shared laughs, their childhood memories, their dreams. For the first time in her life, Rey didn’t feel alone.

When the stars faded from view and the sky changed from deep blue to the bright purples, oranges, and yellows before sunrise, Owen followed her to bed. He was her first for a lot of things. Her first friend, her first kiss, her first spark. His hands explored her skin and made her feel fire in her belly, and her hands reciprocated. His tongue touched parts of her that made her blush but squeal in delight. Her hands and mouth in turn discovered the throbbing difference between man and woman. Even though what she was doing was foreign to her, his moans guided her as her lips and tongue passed over his length over and over until he came undone.

They were too tired for anything more. The two fell asleep, naked in each other’s arms, despite the sunlight peaking through the window. When Rey woke up, he was gone. She never saw him again. So he was her first heartbreak too.

Emerging from her memories, she felt blinding hot rage and jealousy seething from Ben. He was scowling, averting his gaze away from her in a pitiful attempt to hide his emotions. The thought of someone other than him touching her made his blood boil. 

_You’re mine,_ he hissed over their bond. His eyes flickered back to her and then down to her neck, to the faint purple bruise that marked her as his. Seeing his mark on her, the corner of his lip turned into a half smile.

“I am not yours,” Rey snorted, humored by his jealousy. “I will never be yours.”

_We’ll see._

“And what will we see, Ben Solo?” She watched him rise from his seat, and her eyes followed him to the doorway of her hut.

 _We’ll see how long before you realize that you’re lying to yourself._ The door closed behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will probably be my last update for a few days, guys. Real life and all. 
> 
> You’re the best, and your comments give me life. <3


	16. Chapter 16

Wherever she was, Rey definitely wasn’t Ahch-To. It felt like a dream, but it was different, clearer than any dream she had before. 

The sun was scorching above, rivaling the desert heat she grew accustomed to on Jakku, but she wasn’t on her home planet either. The ground was hard and rocky with the occasional sprout of short shrubbery that could endure the severe climate. She closed her eyes and basked in the warmth of the sunlight beating down on her face. 

Sweat beading on her brow, she felt the unmistakable pang of thirst at the back of her throat. Swirling what little spit she had in her mouth, she swallowed and grabbed at the emptiness where she would have normally kept her canteen. When her fingers grasped at the air, she looked around in every direction.

Everywhere she looked, the earth was dry and uninviting. There were no landmarks to speak of, save the lone mountain off in the distance. Listening closely, she could hear the faint chirps and barks of wildlife and began walking in the direction of the sound, toward the mountain. If there was life, there had to be water nearby. 

It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was all she had. 

The sun was nearly set by the time she closed in on the mountain. It looked different from far away, but it was unlike anything she had ever seen. What she thought was a mountain from a distance, she understood it to be something else. The mountain appeared artificial, as if something had tried to build a statue out of the desert rock. Whatever it was or what it was supposed to be, now it was weathered and old, beaten by the unrelenting heat and sandstorms. 

Coming closer to the giant rock, Rey could feel something different there. There was a presence in the Force unlike any she had encountered before. It was neither Light nor Dark but somewhere in between. 

As the young girl understood the Force, both the Light and Dark Sides each had their own appealing qualities that would draw someone Force-sensitive to either side. But this rock or sculpture was neither and didn’t have the same attraction. Rey was drawn to it only by mere intrigue.

When the tips of her fingers grazed the giant rock before her, the ground quaked beneath her feet. Startled, she fell backward and crawled away from the rock. She blinked and saw the mountain rise before her, rocks crumbling and falling down its sides back to the earth. Once the rocks stopped falling, Rey saw that the giant rock was actually a massive living being. She watched in awe and horror as the beast shook the dust from its body. The sun had set, darkness precluding any ability to identify the creature other than its gargantuan size.

Its eyes opened and white irises stared down at the Jedi.

...

Rey’s eyes blinked open, and she yawned. Her dream was fresh in her mind, but she wasn’t quite ready to process it fully or contemplate its implications and pushed it to the back of her mind. Twisting herself in her cot, she turned to see Ben sitting on a chair next to her, waiting for to wake.

_We need to leave._ She could hear the urgency in his voice and looked at him inquisitively. Ben looked irritated when he realized she didn’t know why. _The dream._

“What are you talking about?” Rey started to recall her own dream but didn’t see its relevance. 

_I had the same one. The desert, the creature, all of it._ He was out of his seat and halfway out the door before Rey sat up in her bed.

“Ben, it was just a dream.” He stopped and looked back at her, holding the door open.

_So what of your dream about the island, the ocean?_ Rey nodded at him slowly in understanding, and he let the door close behind him. 

Alone in her thoughts, she started to process what she saw in her dream. She didn’t know why he was rushing her, they didn’t have the slightest idea where to go. An empty desert planet was hardly enough to go on. They didn’t even have proper transport to get off the island, the TIE fighter being only one seat and the Falcon in disrepair. Regardless, she started to gather what little she had brought to the island: the broken lightsaber and Han’s gold dice. 

Even over the gusting wind and the ocean beating against the island, Rey could hear Ben shouting profanities. She left the hut and walked toward where the TIE fighter had landed.

“—if I catch you, I will eat you!” Ben yelled, flailing his lightsaber around trying to hit one of at least ten small, bird-like creatures that flew around him, just out of reach of his weapon. The sight almost made Rey fall to the ground in laughter. During his time on the island, he had not once returned to the ship, and the Porgs must have snuck in and made his spacecraft their home, as they had with the Falcon.

“They’re harmless, Ben,” Rey giggled. On hearing her voice, the Porgs retreated behind the girl, some landing at her feet, others on her shoulders, chirping quietly in their fear. Ben glared at her, barely able to find her face which was almost entirely hidden by the flying critters perched on her shoulders.

_My ship is not their home._ Rey laughed at him and approached the TIE fighter, the Porgs flying toward the cliff to avoid their attacker’s wrath. After watching them fly away, he turned back and climbed into the lone seat of the craft. _I saw this morning that the piece of garbage you call a ship is at the bottom of the ocean. Where it belongs._ He pressed a few buttons in preparation for their departure.

Rey ignored his snide remark. “So how exactly do you expect both of us to leave this island? The ship only has one seat.” A prideful smirk tugged at the corner of Ben’s lips as he motioned for her to come forward, to sit on his lap. She glared at him and crossed her arms. “Absolutely not. I won’t give you the satisfaction. You don’t even know where we’re going.”

_I don’t know where exactly we’re going, but I have a general direction._ He could see the Jedi’s reluctance growing on her face. _Same way I found you, I suppose._

Even though Rey had learned a lot about her counterpart during their time together on the island, she realized that he never did mention how he found her, on a planet in the furthest reaches of the galaxy. He held a hand out to her, a proposal, the same hand he offered her after he killed Snoke and they defeated the guards. She felt a flicker of his hurt and rejection across their bond. Ben was remembering that night too, how she told him no, how they fought to take control of the lightsaber before it exploded. He was more confident now then he was then but nevertheless terrified of her answer. 

_Trust me._

Whether or not she trusted him or if she could trust him, he was her only way off the island, regardless of how much she hated how she would leave. Her hand slid into his, and he pulled her up into the cockpit with him, and the hatch closed.


	17. Chapter 17

“While I’m certain you’re enjoying yourself, we should probably find a more practical ship,” Rey said, face nearly touching the windshield of the cockpit. The TIE fighter had broken the atmosphere of Ahch-To and the console of the ship was quiet, awaiting direction from its pilot as to where they were going.

 _Oh, come on. I don’t bite—hard._ Ben’s voice echoed across their bond. _Unless you want me to that is._

If there was enough space in the ship for her arm to move, she would have used it to punch him, but instead she rolled her eyes, brushing off his advances. She could feel the warmth of his body against hers. In a way, the human contact was comforting despite being crammed into such closed quarters. The past few days on Ahch-To had been devoid of any physical contact, the few hours that weren’t spent training were spent sleeping. She let her mind wander through her memories to the last time she had any outside contact with anyone, a handshake, an embrace from her friends. She hadn’t said goodbye to anyone before she abandoned the Resistance, so the last time was when she rescued Finn and the rest of the Resistance on Crait. 

But that hadn’t been the last time either. Though she was trapped on the island after she crashed the Falcon, Ben had found her. Her last physical contact wasn’t Finn; it was Ben. She tried to push the thought, the memory out of her head, but she couldn’t. She remembered how warm his skin felt against hers down in the cavern.

Her thoughts hadn’t been as private as she thought they were. Rey didn’t feel Ben creep into her mind, but she could feel him at the very edges of her head. It was confirmed by the bulge pressing underneath her. He was remembering that moment too.

“What is the closest planet we can get a ship?” Rey said ignoring the Ben’s growth beneath her.

 _Jakku._ Rey’s nose scrunched up in thought. Ben understood that she didn’t want to go back. In any case, there would be a First Order presence there which was something he didn’t want to deal with at the moment. The next closest planet, Zonama Sekot, was probably not a good idea either. There were some grumblings that the planet, unlike any other in the galaxy, was sentient. Whether or not it was true, he wasn’t sure, but it was probably safe to assume that there wouldn’t be a ship for them to steal there. 

Rey was watching his thought process as Ben mulled over ideas of where they should go. She saw a memory pulled to the forefront of his mind and play before them.

A young, long-haired boy laid in bed, a woman sat at his bedside. Though there wasn’t much to see in the darkness, through the window, Rey could see trees covered in snow glistening in the moonlight. The child was protesting his bedtime and was only placated by his mother agreeing to tell him a story before he slept.

“A long time ago,” the mother began, “a Jedi, a smuggler, a Wookiee, and two droids landed on a moon in the Outer Rim territories. They were concerned and worried because a princess, their friend, had fallen out of the sky and crashed. When they reached the crash site, they didn’t find her, and they thought she didn’t make it. Distracted by hunger, the Wookiee found his dinner, practically dangling in front of him on a silver platter, but it was a trap. A net scooped up the five of them, and they were trapped.

“Little furry creatures, Ewoks, jumped out from the brush to see what they had caught, armed with spears. One of the droids managed to cut open the net to free them, and they fell. The Ewoks were fascinated by one of the droids; they had never seen anything like him before. They thought he was a god.

“Even though their captors were small, they were strong, and they tied the other four up and carried them to their village. They didn’t know what they could possibly want with them. When they finally got to their village, there were many, many more of them, and they started to prepare a ceremony. It was only when the droid managed to translate what they had said did they realize they were in big trouble. They were about to be dinner. In his honor nonetheless.

“Little did they know, their missing princess was also there; she had befriended the Ewoks. Together, her and the droid pleaded with the elders to let their friends go, but they were reluctant. So the men devised a plan to set them free. Since the Ewoks thought the droid was a god, the Jedi would make them believe that he was magical, that they should obey his command. The Jedi lifted him up in his seat, and the Ewoks bowed in amazement at what they had seen and agreed to let their friends go.

“Later, the friends learned that there was an Empire base—” A knock sounded at the door to the room, and a man peeked his head in. The mother looked back and nodded at him before she turned back to her son. 

“Now it’s time for bed. We’ll pick up from here tomorrow night,” her voice was soft and comforting, and the boy was finally too tired to fight his heavy eyelids any longer. She rose from the bed and quietly closed the door behind her. 

_Enjoying yourself?_ Rey jumped at the sound of his voice, its owner caught her in the act, like a child caught absconding with sweets in the middle of the night. She couldn’t help it. She felt it only fair that she have a glimpse of his life, who he was before he called himself Kylo Ren, because he had seen so much of her. He had seen her past while she had only seen his future. 

In any case, those pieces of his childhood reminded her that under all that Darkness, there was still Light. No matter how shrouded it was. Rey felt a sort of indescribable closeness to him, an intimacy that only shared between people who have nothing to hide, their souls laid bare. The little taste of watching his past play before her eyes made her crave more, to know more about him. She wondered if he had felt the same sensation exploring her mind.

 _The moon is Endor. There’s an old Empire base there, and more than likely a bigger ship. It was where the Empire suffered one of its greatest losses._ His tone was soft, remembering.

“Why have I never heard of it?” Rey asked.

_The First Order would have erased that part of history in reverence to the Empire. Its defeat was a stain on its name, so the Order would have destroyed any evidence that the Empire had lost the battle there to prevent anyone from believing that they could do what the Alliance did: unite and rebel against the Order._

“It looks like their precautions didn’t matter,” Rey said. “History repeated itself anyway.”

Ben nodded and pushed a lever forward, launching them into hyperspace.


	18. Chapter 18

At a young age, Rey was always fascinated by spacecrafts. She would take apart their engines and reassemble them to learn each part and purpose of the motor. In her imagination as a child, she thought she could build a ship from scrap so impressive that her parents would have to come home to congratulate her. Together, they would ride off into the stars, and never go back to Jakku. Even though she knew better now as an adult, there was something exhilarating about being in the cockpit of a ship, the engine rumbling under her feet, the entire galaxy at her fingertips.

This was not one of those times.

By the time Rey and Ben reached Endor, night had fallen, and they were both sore from being confined in such a small space. The TIE fighter hadn’t even touched the ground before Rey opened the hatch and jumped out, stretching after the long journey. 

Ben had known where the unoccupied base was even in the dark. Rey didn’t know how he knew where it was, considering it was hidden by trees and built into a hill making it near impossible to distinguish from anything else. However, at this point, she didn’t particularly care how he knew; she was grateful they wouldn’t have to hike through the forest. Given her history of encounters with the natives, Rey thought it best to try not to cross paths with the Ewoks.

It was eerily quiet, the world silently sleeping around them, unaware of their arrival. The only sound that could be heard was the earth crunching with each step. Rey followed behind Ben as he made his way to the closed entrance of the base. 

Large gloved hands made their way around the edges of the door, feeling for any abnormality that could possibly allow them inside. They came across something circular, caked with years of dust, and Ben pressed down. Lights above blinked on, and the building shrieked to life. There were a few rumbles of old machinery behind the door before it finally opened. The two walked inside, door closing behind them.

“Any idea where the hangar is?” Rey asked as they reached a fork in the corridor. Ben nodded and took the right hallway. “How is anyone supposed to know where to go? There’s nothing to distinguish any of them apart. It’s a maze.”

_It’s intentional. The Empire designed them specifically so anyone who wasn’t supposed to be there would undoubtedly be lost. It was meant to keep prisoners from escaping._ Rey looked up and saw Ben looking at her before he averted his gaze. Despite the First Order borrowing the idea from the Empire, Rey had managed to escape. Twice.

After a few more turns and three flights of steps, they finally found the hangar, a concrete room full of spacecrafts with some destroyed and others intact. Among a number of fighters, there were several smaller cargo ships on either end of the room. They weren’t big, but it was better than the TIE fighter. Rey and Ben each boarded a ship and entered the cockpit.

The ships probably hadn’t been used in over thirty years, so Rey wasn’t surprised when the engine of her ship turned over before it sputtered and died out. Ben’s on the other hand roared to life, and hearing the sound of the ship’s engine, she jumped out and boarded the one that was running. Climbing into the cockpit, she sat down in the copilot’s seat next to Ben. In a few minutes, the craft was off the ground and exiting the hangar, rising to the stars.

“Do you have any idea where we’re going?” Rey yawned. She took over the controls as Ben closed his eyes and reached out into the Force, searching for whatever called to them in the dream. When his brown eyes finally opened, they were out of Endor’s atmosphere. Rey let him take over the controls, and he adjusted the ship before he launched the sequence to enter hyperspace. Acceleration pushing Rey against the back of her seat, she watched the twinkling stars against the blackness of space transform into blue lights of hyperspace. 

Ben put the ship on autopilot. _It’s a long journey, so let’s see what the Imperials left behind for us._ The ship was smaller than Rey had realized. When Ben stood up, he had to duck his head through the doorways. 

The first door Rey opened revealed a refresher, and suddenly she didn’t care what else the ship had. It had to have been at least a week since her last shower, since she left the Resistance base. She was now aware of the dirt and salt caked into her skin. As she walked in, she closed the door behind her. Eyes avoiding the mirror, not wanting to see the present state of her appearance, she turned the water on and let the steam fill the room. After stripping out of her clothes, she climbed into the stall. The hot water soothed her aching muscles.

After she finally felt clean, she shut the water off and climbed out, wiping herself dry with a towel hanging on the wall. She smelled something awful and looked around the refresher confused. It was her clothes.

Wrapping the towel around her, she peeked her head out of the refresher. Assuming Ben had gone back to the cockpit, she made her way in the opposite direction, hoping to find the quarters, and hoping even more that fresh clothes awaited her there. She passed a small kitchen and a door leading down to the cargo hold before she found the last door that would lead to the bedroom. When she opened the door, she collided with Ben who was on his way out.

_There’s only one bed—_ He stopped mid sentence, now aware that Rey was standing before him, hair still dripping, in nothing more than a towel. Her face went red, and she pushed past him and opened drawers in the bedroom in search of clothes.

_I’ll sleep in the cockpit,_ Ben offered. He realized that Rey was embarrassed and tried not to look, but his eyes failed him. 

When she found clothes that would fit her, she looked up at Ben. “If you can behave yourself, the bed is big enough for both of us, but you don’t seem to be doing so well at the moment.” His eyes rose from the towel wrapped around her up to her face and nodded before he turned and walked back toward the cockpit. 

Like most nights, her body was exhausted but her mind was not. Rey climbed into the empty bed, pulled the blanket over her, and let her thoughts take over. Deeply buried in her own mind, she hardly even noticed when Ben came back to the bedroom and laid down beside her. It was only when she felt the heat resonating from his body on her skin did she realize he was next to her. 

Rolling over to her side, facing him, she whispered, “Ben?” His eyes were closed, but she could tell he wasn’t sleeping.

_Hmm?_

“Something’s been bothering me. If Snoke really did create our bond, why is the Force still connecting us? Wouldn’t have it been cut off after he died?” He rolled to his side and stared into her eyes. For a long moment, he didn’t answer. 

_I am not entirely sure he was being truthful when he revealed that he connected our minds, but I have no better explanation to offer._

It wasn’t the answer she had been hoping for; it was just something else she didn’t know, something she couldn’t wrap her head around. Was the bond permanent? That even after Snoke forged the bond between their minds, it would exist after death? As close as she had become with Ben, she hoped not. The lone scavenger was used to the peaceful silence of her own thoughts. To be forced to share her thoughts with someone else, him of all people, was too intimate. Could she really live the rest of her life with him always in her thoughts and her always in his?

But if it wasn’t Snoke who had created the connection, what could it be? Was it possible that the Force had bigger plans for them? The Force as Rey understood it worked in mysterious ways, but even from what little experience she had, the Force manipulating their bond seemed rather unlikely.

There was also the possibility that they had unknowingly created the bond when they invaded each other minds on Starkiller Base. It was undeniable; they were equals, two halves of the same whole. Ben had invaded Poe’s mind, but Poe wasn’t strong with the Force, so there couldn’t be a connection. Snoke had seen Ben’s mind but not vice versa. Perhaps under the right circumstances with the two people that were equal in power but opposite in their side of the Force could form a bond in such a way. Sure, that idea was unheard of, but Rey was sure there would be no recorded history documenting any interaction, any compromise between the Light and Dark Side.

Rey wanted to ask Ben what he thought, but she heard his soft snores and chose not to wake him. His face was peaceful, the permanent scowl on his face relaxed. In his sleep, one could hardly believe that he had murdered innocent people, murdered his own father. His face was like that of a small child. It was sweet and maddening all the same.

Regardless of how much she wanted to know what he thought about their bond, it could at least wait until morning. Believing what she had thought, they did have the rest of their lives to find out why they were still connected.


	19. Chapter 19

There is a brief moment between being asleep and awake where the mind is empty, content, and unburdened by the agenda of the coming day. Rey’s eyes were still closed, and she was warm, comfortable, unthinking of where she was, who she was with, and where she was going.

When her brain finally gave the gentle push to consciousness, she was surprised, almost confused, realizing the resonating heat warming her was not her own body but someone else’s. Her head was no longer supported by the same pillow she fell asleep on the night before, but the skin of Ben’s unclothed, muscular chest, and her arm was wrapped around his side. As she pulled back, she felt his arm behind her gently twirling her loose hair behind her neck. She looked up, his brown eyes were open, staring at her contently.

 _I didn’t want to wake you._ Even though he hadn’t said a word, only spoken in her mind through their bond, she felt the softness of his voice, sweet and content, and his euphoria flowed through their connection to her. Normally she would have pulled away, ended this moment, but the feeling was intoxicating, and she savored it.

They laid together in silence for sometime, their bodies intertwined, until Rey finally gathered enough motivation to leave the bed. She tied her hair back into three buns, and Ben grabbed his shirt laying on the floor beside the bed and slipped it over his head. By the time he was fully dressed, Rey was already back in the cockpit, investigating where Ben had taken her. 

Sometime while Rey slept, he must have returned to the cockpit. They were longer in hyperspace, so she presumed they must be close to their destination. She investigated the console, looking for its navigation to tell her what system they were in. Though she had spent most of her life scavenging parts from destroyed Empire spacecrafts, she was more familiar with the parts under the console rather than their actual purpose. Pressing random buttons, a hologram appeared on the dash, a news bulletin sent throughout the entire galaxy. A small humanoid figure bellowed at her:

“—SUPREME LEADER ARMITAGE HUX HAS DECLARED KYLO REN OTHERWISE KNOWN AS BEN SOLO AN ENEMY AND TRAITOR TO THE FIRST ORDER. ANY BEING WHO ATTEMPTS TO AID OR ABET REN WILL BE SWIFTLY EXECUTED. ANY INFORMATION THAT LEADS TO HIS CAPTURE WILL BE HEAVILY REWARDED. GLORY TO THE FIRST ORDER.”

After the hologram disappeared from the console, she turned around and saw Ben standing behind her, his arms crossed leaning against the doorway to the cockpit. His brow was furrowed in irritation, but he was silent as he sat down in the pilot’s seat beside Rey. He toggled a buttons and pulled a lever, and the console buzzed at him as the ship moved forward, aiming at a rusty-red planet. 

Rey watched his expression but didn’t feel the anger seething over the bond like she had expected him to react. “Ben?” He looked over at her, waiting for her to continue. “I half expected you to tear apart the ship before we landed.”

Ben shrugged his shoulders. _It’s annoying, but his reign will be short lived. He’s a pathetic little man who has only ever commanded from the sidelines. I’ll make him pay for what he’s done. Painfully._

Thoughts of Hux’s mutilation swarmed his mind as he contemplated how he would take back his Empire. Rey saw the possibilities play in his head and shuddered. She had grown accustomed to the growing warmth and Light in Ben’s mind when he was around her, but now it was overshadowed by the cold Darkness of his anger. It lessened when he thought of what would come afterward, what he wanted to happen. She saw him standing on the bridge of the Supremacy, commanding a reformed Order, and Rey standing beside him, donning a beautiful grey gown, her fingers intertwined with his. The Jedi couldn’t tell if he was purposefully letting her see what he had planned or if the link between them had become too strong for any barriers.

So she tested her theory. She closed her eyes and built a blockade around her mind, gathering all the strength she had in the Force. Behind the wall, she thought about the Resistance, about Finn, her closest friend. Though she hadn’t thought about him in some time, she did genuinely miss him. Even though he probably wouldn’t admit it, Rey knew that he had only come to Starkiller Base to save her; he really did care for her.

Ben said nothing, but he didn’t have to. He slammed the buttons on the console around him, searing jealousy oozing into the air around him while he prepared the ship to break the atmosphere of the unknown red planet. It was true; there could be no barriers between them now. Their time together must have solidified their bond, making any attempts to hide their thoughts, their feelings, their secrets from each other impossible.

Streaks of fire burned the air around the ship as they descended closer to their destination. After they pushed through what little wisps of clouds, they could see the endless, sun-torched wasteland below. Ben pulled down on the wheel, and the nose of the ship steadied at a high enough altitude they could see almost to the horizon and set the speed so they would have ample time to spot any abnormalities in the landscape.

After an hour of searching, their eyes were strained, and the two were growing increasingly impatient. Rey finally gave up and slumped back against her seat in the cockpit. Ben put the craft on autopilot and retreated into his thoughts, eyes closed. She had felt him push out into the Force, but before she could figure out what exactly he was looking for, he had already shut autopilot off, turned the ship in a different direction, and increased its speed.

Against a setting sun, there was a mass in the distance, a silhouette on the horizon, the same shape that they had seen in their dream. The ship groaned in protest as Ben thrusted the accelerator. They slammed down to the earth when they were finally close enough and disembarked.

Though Rey had seen her dreams become reality in the past, it never ceased to amaze her. Walking around the giant mass, she looked up in awe at its massive size. Rey moved closer, Ben right beside her, and they looked at the other in eagerness and understanding as the two each raised a hand and touched the being before them.

The ground quaked, but Rey was expecting it this time. They both backed up, as the entity stood, shaking rocks and dirt from its body. After a painfully long moment, its eyes opened and looked at them, revealing white irises glowing in the darkness, the last thing either of them had seen before awakening.

It wasn’t as dark as it was in her dream, so even in the diminishing sunlight of the ending day, she was able to see the creature. It was unlike any alien species she had ever encountered, and she had seen many during her time on Jakku. The galaxy was home to thousands of different races, but she couldn’t understand how something so massive could go unnoticed, undocumented. The being’s body was covered in tan shell-like plates like armor covering almost its entire body. Humanoid hands seemed to support the weight of his cumbersome body where his stump-like hind legs had failed. From his stance, she couldn’t deduce if the entity was a bipedal or quadrupedal because he made no effort to stand upright. He shifted more of its weight to its hands as he brought his face closer to Ben and Rey, a long, reddish-brown beard touching the ground, its brow furrowed with age. When he exhaled through his snout, the air kicked up the dust around them. 

“What are—who are you?” Rey whispered through her awe. She wasn’t entirely sure if she should expect a response, not knowing if the being was in fact sentient. It had a particularly unusual presence in the Force, but every living thing in the galaxy had its own Force signature.

Ben blinked, and for once, he spoke aloud, not across their bond. “The Bendu.” Rey couldn’t tell if he was asking a question or making a statement, but he was as awestruck as her. 

“The—what?” Rey looked over at him, not certain if he was speaking another language.

“I thought he was only a legend,” Ben whispered, walking closer. Before he could elaborate further, the massive creature before them spoke, his voice bellowing across the Force. Visions of a history long forgotten permeated their minds.

_I am what came before. The part of the Force that has since been forgotten by time and whose history overwritten by the arrogance of men. As you have come to understand the Force, there are only two sides: the Jedi and the Sith, the Light and the Dark, the Ashla and the Bogan, but there is a third. I am the Balance, the Grey, the Bendu._

_Centuries ago, before the Jedi and the Sith differentiated into separate entities, there was only one, the Je’daii. Force-sensitive beings learned together on Tython and observed the importance of Balance in the universe, the same Balance visible to them in the world around them: two moons, the white Ashla and the dark Bogan, together in the same sky._

_When a Force-user favored the Light, they were banished to Ashla to contemplate the Darkness of Bogan. When they favored the Dark, they went to Bogan to meditate on Ashla in return. They remained until they understood the importance of both sides of the Force. However as time passed, the banishment generated animosity. Those on Ashla began to despise the moon, and those on Bogan did the same._

Though she listened patiently, Rey found herself with more questions than answers. On the other hand, Ben was anxious, waiting for an answer for why the Bendu brought them here.

_Even after the Jedi and the Sith formed, I remained. I warned them of the dangers of veering too far to one side of the Force; it would only result in chaos. I watched alone as righteous Ashla rebuilt broken worlds only to fight the power-hungry Bogan in their destructive conquest to rule the galaxy unopposed time and time again. I became concerned that the degrees of separation between Jedi and Sith would only grow, their war engulfing the universe._

_I have waited for you two for a long time. You are the last hope of restoring Balance._

Rey looked over at Ben, a confounded expression painted on her face, before she managed to formulate a question. “So two people, a Jedi and a Sith, are supposed to restore Balance to the galaxy?”

_You are neither Jedi nor Sith. While your Force is bright, you have often called upon anger. Your attachment to the man beside you and fear of losing him darkens your heart. His Force is dark, but his love and compassion for you can illuminate even the darkest of rooms. You are two halves of the same Force, your fates intertwined, even without my intervention._

Eyes wide, Rey and Ben looked up at the Bendu in surprise and curiosity.

_The link between your minds was of my design, a gentle push forward to a fate already predetermined. The Force decided your connection long before I planted the idea in Snoke. The bond you share is not accidental; it is a buffer, a tool to use to find the Balance between you. Even in your darkest of days, you will never be swallowed by the Dark Side, and even in your happiness of moments, you will always find your way back to the center. You both apprentice and teacher to the other._

A breadth of understanding washed over the two humans as they listened to the words of the massive entity before them. Against Rey’s initial belief, Ben had been right; the Force had been the architect of their lives, ultimately bringing them together for a purpose. Though a great responsibility had been thrusted upon her, she felt a weight lifted from her shoulders, and she felt like she could breathe for the first time. She no longer had to fight her power and the Darkness building in her mind to adhere to Jedi principles. She could feel the same relief in Ben.

_Do not be afraid. There is death and destruction ahead. The universe will be much Darker before the Light returns again._

The last traces of the setting sun had vanished beyond the horizon. The light of the day had ended, but the stars and moonlight glowed brightly in the night sky, lighting the way to their ship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long chapter guys! Hope you enjoyed it. I’ll have another update probably before the end of the week.


	20. Chapter 20

After the hatch to the cargo ship closed, Rey and Ben faced each other in nervous silence, uncertain of how to address what Bendu said so blatantly. Though Rey she could explore his mind freely, she had skirted around it, and Ben had done the same in return. The Force-entity had unearthed the feelings she convinced herself she didn’t and couldn’t have as a Jedi, bound to the principles of detachment. Fully clothed, she felt naked, her heart and soul raw and bare. 

But she wasn’t the only one. Rey knew that Ben desired her, wanted her as his own. She made herself believe that his starved desires for the human contact he lacked, Rey being the first and only one to acknowledge him, precipitated his lust for her. She hadn’t taken into account his jealousy at the mere thought of her with someone else and how severe he was to everyone around him, to everyone but her. When he offered her the galaxy on the Supremacy, he didn’t care about power, just her. 

When she looked up, her eyes found his. Lost in the deep brown, she let the barrier guarding herself crumble, letting herself drown in the feelings from which she tried to protect herself. Ben was waiting for her all this time, waiting for her to quit denying herself what she wanted, to stop holding on to a cyclical past. He had made his intentions known; he left the rest to her.

This was what he wanted.

Setting aside any reservations she had before, her hands wrapped around his neck and pulled his face to hers. When her lips kissed his, fire ignited in her belly. It surprised him initially, but his hands eagerly wrapped around her sides and met in the small of her back, pulling her body closer to his. Aching desire flooded her body pleading for him to take her, and she kissed him more urgently. 

His body wanted the same. Rey could feel the hardness of his arousal throbbing against her navel. The Darkness inside her roared in excitement, flaunting the power she held over him. As much as he boasted that she was his, Ben belonged to her. He didn’t contest it.

She pushed him against a wall and took his bottom lip between her teeth. Her hands drifted down his chest and made their way to the seam of his shirt before she pulled it over his head. In the fleeting moment of their bodies separated, Rey saw the hunger in his eyes; the Darkness behind them threatening to devour her completely. While her lips drifted from his face to his neck, her fingers explored his body, memorizing every muscle, every scar, every imperfection that made him human. When she sucked at the skin of his neck, a groan rumbled from his throat. She made her mark on him and then made another. 

_You’re mine,_ Rey growled over the bond. He took it as a challenge, trying to take control. With a flick of her wrist, Ben’s back was against the wall, his hands pinned behind his head by the Force. Rey traced a finger down his face to his collarbone, gently gliding over his perfectly defined abdomen. When a single finger slid across the inside the belt line of his trousers, grazing the skin of his hip bones, he whimpered. 

_Rey..._

The sound of her name escaping his lips was enough to send shivers down her spine, enough to break her concentration, releasing her grip on him. He took advantage of it. Before Rey could even realize what happened, Ben had lifted her into his arms and was carrying her to the bedroom. As he put her back on her feet, he slid the shirt over her head in one fluid motion before his hands gripped the bindings around her chest and ripped them apart. Just as swiftly, her pants were undone and around her ankles as he pushed her onto the bed. 

He climbed on top of her and kissed her cheek before his lips and his tongue drifted down. His eyes looked up at her with each kiss. When he reached the inside of her thigh, her sex throbbed, begging for his touch. His tongue explored the flesh between her folds, and her back arched in delight. Her hands instinctively grabbed for his hair so she could pull his face closer. Even though his mouth was occupied, his eyes were watching her, learning what motions she enjoyed the most as his tongue traveled up and down, in circles, suckling on her clit. Her hands balled his hair into fists; her breath quickened the closer she came. When he found the perfect spot, her eyes closed, back arched as she came undone—only in her euphoria did she allow his name to pass through her lips.

He licked his lips, her essence still on them, and pulled himself up from the bed to unbuckle his pants. He was beautiful. His black curls framed around his face; his perfectly defined body and pale complexion, its only imperfection the scars that marred his skin. The inside of her thighs still twitching from her release, Rey’s sleepy eyes followed his movements, watching him intently as his pants fell past his ankles. Her pulse quickened and her eyes grew wide; he was huge.

A smirk of self-satisfaction tugged at the corners of his lips as Ben sensed her reaction. He crawled on top of her, his member throbbing and pressing against the inside of her legs as his mouth reunited with hers. Her fingers threaded through his long hair, and his hands thumbed over her each of her nipples. Breaking their kiss, his face fell to her breasts. Cupping one mound in his hand, his tongue flicked over the other nipple, forcing out a whimper from his lover. He let his other hand slide down, parting her slit, and slipped his long index finger inside her.

Eyes rolling back into her head, she panted, passion erupting inside her. Her hands balled the sheets when he slid a second finger inside. Knowing she was still a virgin, he was gentle at first, moving slowly enough to let her get used to the new sensation before his pace quickened; his fingers curved upward, thrusting them inside her, forcing her to moan. His thumb moved over her clit, rubbing it with each time his fingers pushed into her. He gently took her nipple between his teeth, and the added pleasure sent her over the edge; her back arched, climaxing in his hand.

When Rey opened her eyes, Ben loomed over her; his arousal hard and throbbing against the inside of her thigh. He had tormented her long enough. In one swift motion, she flipped him over, and now she was on top of him. She sat up, sitting on his hips, and his hungry eyes drank in her entire body before his hands began exploring. They drifted down her sides and gripped her hips, bucking his member at her entrance, trying to push his way inside her. 

He wasn’t in command; she was. Calling on the Force, she slammed his hands back from her, pinning him against the bed. Her strength excited him; his member tensing beneath her. She took him in her hand, guiding his tip through the warm wetness between her folds, back and forth. His closed his eyes and tried to stifle back a moan. He tried to free himself, to take back control, but her strength, her Dark, had overpowered him. Rey smiled smugly at his failed attempts.

The Darkness of her passion had taken over her entirely, but she wasn’t afraid of it anymore.

This is what she wanted.

_Rey..._

“Who is your master?” She let allowed the very tip of him to breach her body, her walls pressing tightly against him. He gasped, and she pulled him out again. “Say it.”

_You._

She smirked, still sliding his arousal through her slit, as she dropped her face to his ear.

“Tell me,” Rey breathed into his ear, sending shivers through his body. She slowly slid the tip back inside again. “Is this what you want?” He nodded desperately, biting his bottom lip. “Beg me, fight for it.” She slid him back out.

_Rey... please..._ He mustered enough strength to move his hands, and they flung to her hips, trying to pull her down on him. With her free hand, Rey flicked her wrist, and his hands were back behind his head.

“I don’t think you want it back enough,” Rey said, smirking. His frustrated desire was already a hot flame in his loins, and Rey had just thrown fuel on it. He glared at her.

_I’m going to fuck you so hard I split you in two._ He growled, teeth bared.

“Well, if you insist,” Rey relented and set Ben free. Before she had blinked, his hands were on her shoulders, slamming her on her back as he settled himself between her legs. He wasn’t gentle anymore; his hand gripped her throat; his fingers and his thumb pressed down on the arteries in her neck. With his other hand, he positioned himself at her entrance and pushed inside.

Her walls protested the further he went inside her, preventing him from slamming himself inside her like he thought he would. The pleasure of finally being inside her lessened his grip around her throat, and she gasped for air. 

She winced at the painful pressure and her hands balled into fists. Realizing he was hurting her, he slid himself out of her, worried.

_Are you okay?_ He was gentle, soft, concerned. Rey smiled at him.

“It’ll pass. Keep going.” She didn’t need to tell him twice. He guided himself in again slowly, pushing through the pressure of her walls against him, pulled himself out and back in again. Rey gritted her teeth through the pain, expecting it to continue, but it didn’t; she just felt the overwhelming sensation of him being inside her. Her fingers slid through his hair, and she moaned and wrapped her legs around him, bringing him further inside her. 

She could feel his pulse, throbbing inside her with each thrust. His hands slid behind her back and pulled their bodies closer together. He kissed her with parted lips; his tongue slipped out of his mouth to hers and their tongues met. Between wet kisses, his moans breathed into her mouth. He was close.

This is what they needed.

Their bodies intertwined; connected; reunited each time Ben was inside her. They were whole. His Darkness was hers, and they were one. Rey’s hands shifted to his back and her nails bit into his skin, unable to contain her own pleasure, and it sent him over the edge. His eyes rolled back and let out a groan, and she felt his member throb inside her, releasing his seed. 

He kissed her forehead and slid out of her. Both exhausted, they crawled to the top of the bed, not even bothering to put clothes on. Ben slid the blanket out from under them and covered them both. He lifted his arm, and Rey curled up next to him; her head resting on her chest; her arm draped across him. His arms wrapped around her, bringing her as close to him as he physically could before they both fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys enjoyed this as much I loved writing this. Let me know what you think!


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